Coronavirus | Joe Biden orders probe into virus origins

President tells U.S. intel community to ‘redouble’ their efforts to determine if there was a lab accident

U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he has asked American intelligence agencies to “redouble” their efforts to analyse the origins of COVID-19, to determine whether it emerged from human-animal contact or via a laboratory accident. With this, Mr. Biden adds significantly to the growing pressure on China to be more open about the origins of the SARS-COV2 virus, an outbreak of which was seen first in early 2020 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which houses the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Mr. Biden said he had reviewed a report on the origins of the virus, authored by his National Security Adviser (Jake Sullivan) and intelligence officials and that the intelligence community had “coalesced around two likely scenarios”, yet not reached a “definitive conclusion” as to the origins of the virus. Currently, there is “low to moderate confidence” attached to each of the two theories on the virus’s origins, Mr. Biden said.