The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory.

A newly declassified report, released by the CIA on Saturday, is once again stoking the debate around the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. The report is not based on any new intelligence and was completed under the agency’s previous leadership at the request of the Biden administration.

Various U.S. intelligence agencies have launched investigations into the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, often reaching “low confidence” results.

It was unclear the extent to which the agency has collected new intelligence on COVID-19's origins and whether that new evidence was used to formulate the latest assessment.

China on Monday dismissed the possibility that the virus that caused COVID-19 leaked from a lab, after the CIA said it now favors the so-called lab leak theory over natural transmission. “It

CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”

After years of speculation, the CIA has weighed in yet again: A lab leak is now considered the likely origin of the COVID pandemic. However, the agency admits it has "low confidence" in its conclusion and says both a natural origin and a research-related incident are still possible.

The origin of Covid-19 has always been a point of contention in the U.S., but the CIA recently claimed they now believe it came from a lab leak. In a statement on January 25, a spokesperson for the government organization shared the “CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a