Biden orders review of US information on the origin of the coronavirus Coronavirus pandemic News

President Joe Biden said the U.S. will put pressure on China to participate in a “very and transparent” investigation into the origin of the coronavirus.

U.S. President Joe Biden has instructed U.S. spy agencies to review classified information about the origin of the coronavirus, including from human-animal contacts or from a Chinese research lab.

Speaking on Wednesday, Biden said the U.S. intelligence community has merged “around two likely scenarios,” but has yet to reach a definitive conclusion on the origin of the coronavirus.

He also has little confidence in the current conclusions, and is likely to remain divided over what he is likely to do.

As a result, Biden said he called on U.S. intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts to gather and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion” and to report it within 90 days.

“Within this report, I have asked for areas of research that may be necessary, as well as specific questions about China,” the U.S. president said.

World Health Organization (WHO) examination the virus, which was released in late March, concluded that bats were likely to be transmitted to humans via another animal and that the stage and laboratory escapes were “very unlikely”.

However, questions remain about the level of access that WHO researchers had on a research mission to Wuhan (China), and the disease was reported among researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A group of 14 countries it created concern Referring to the WHO report, citing delays and a complete lack of access to data, while the WHO chief called for further research into the theory, the outbreak was the result of a laboratory leak. China has strongly rejected the accusation.

U.S. intelligence agencies, meanwhile, have been examining reports on the matter researchers at the Wuhan virology laboratory they became seriously ill in 2019, a month before the first cases of COVID-19 were reported.

U.S. government sources warned earlier this week that there is no evidence in the lab that the disease has been produced.

A U.S. intelligence report still classified in the administration of former President Donald Trump reported that in November 2019 three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became very ill, seeking hospital care, sources who report and analyze U.S. intelligence told Reuters.

Investigators said they were hospitalized or did not know what their symptoms were, one source said, citing anonymity with Reuters.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Monday that the reports were “completely false.”

Meanwhile, Biden said on Wednesday that “the United States will continue to work with similar partners around the world to press China for a very transparent, transparent international investigation to participate in an international evidence-based investigation and provide access to all relevant data and evidence.”

White House Undersecretary of Press Karine Jean-Pierre said the president’s directive should not be interpreted as a U.S. rejection of WHO research, but rather aimed at providing the best U.S. information and resources to answer ongoing questions.

“WHO is doing their thing [intelligence community] doing what they are doing today is not mutually exclusive, ”Jean-Pierre said.

“This is something that can happen at the same time,” he told White House reporters.