Science
CIA in shock u-turn over COVID-19 origins
With Donald Trump now back in the White House, the intelligence agency in the United States has shared the current thinking on the pandemic.

This year, 2025, marks five years since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The virus first entered global consciousness in January 2020, as images of China constructing hospitals from scratch in record time captured the world’s attention. Just weeks later, cases began to emerge across the globe. The rest, as they say, is history.
Half a decade later, it remains impossible to definitively pinpoint the origins of a pandemic that has claimed millions of lives worldwide – over seven million, according to the World Health Organization’s December report. Theories range from a natural origin through animals, with bats being the most likely source, to human involvement via a laboratory. However, neither has been confirmed beyond doubt.

The CIA points to a China lab leak as the “most likely” origin
According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the “most likely” origin of the pandemic is a laboratory leak in China – a significant shift from their earlier stance, although with caveats, which regarded both scenarios as equally plausible.
“The CIA considers, with low confidence, that the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely to have originated from research-related activities than from a natural source, based on the available reports,” a CIA spokesperson stated.
This statement is tied to a report commissioned under the previous Joe Biden administration but released now, with Donald Trump back in office and John Ratcliffe as the new CIA director. Despite its conclusions, the agency emphasized that it continues to evaluate both the research-related and natural-origin scenarios as plausible explanations for the pandemic.

Trump and Ratcliffe support the COVID lab-leak theory
Ratcliffe, who has long asserted that the virus originated from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, called the origin of COVID-19 a “day one priority” upon assuming his role. While it may not have been addressed on his first day, it was tackled within the first week. Like Ratcliffe, Trump has frequently endorsed the lab-leak theory, referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus” on multiple occasions.
The report, finalized weeks before the new administration took office, was released following pressure from former CIA director Bill Burns, who urged the agency to adopt a position on the pandemic’s origins. Ratcliffe ultimately decided to declassify the evaluation.
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