Eva Deschamps/ August 25, 2021
The report requested by U.S. President Joe Biden to his intelligence services on the origin of Covid-19 does not allow to decide this sensitive issue, source of friction between Washington and Beijing, reported Tuesday evening U.S. media.
The President of the United States had called at the end of May for the American intelligence, until now unable to rule on the thesis of an animal origin or that of a leak in the Chinese laboratory of Wuhan, to redouble its efforts to explain the origin of Covid-19 and to provide a report within 90 days. Mr. Biden received the top-secret report on Tuesday, but the document is inconclusive because despite their research and analysis, intelligence officials have not been able to agree on a definitive explanation, according to the Washington Post, which cited two unnamed U.S. officials close to the case.
This is partly because China did not provide enough information, the Wall Street Journal says, also relying on two unnamed senior U.S. officials. According to the officials cited by the Washington Post, the intelligence community will attempt in the coming days to declassify parts of the report for potential public release. Long dismissed by most experts, the theory of a laboratory accident in Wuhan, China, has returned to the American debate in recent months.
And calls for further investigation have multiplied within the scientific community. China, which is fiercely fighting the lab hypothesis, has accused Washington of spreading conspiracy theories. The Covid-19 pandemic has killed at least 4,439,888 people worldwide since the end of December 2019, according to a report by AFP on Tuesday from official sources.