US intelligence ‘yet to analyse’ raft of evidence that might shed light on Covid origin mystery

Investigators to hunt new intelligence to understand if China’s involvement in cover up of leak

Coronavirus outbreak in the US has prompted restaurants owners to innovate enclose plastic domes dining areas (AFP via Getty Images)

President Joe Biden has reportedly asked US intelligence agencies to double down on their efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus after he was briefed that they still have untapped evidence that might shine a light on the mystery of how the virus first emerged.

The White House was informed that the intelligence still has a large amount of unexamined data that would require computer analysis to have evidence for questions whether the Covid virus accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab, reported New York Times, citing a government official.

The White House wants to marshal the US allies, tap national labs and other scientific resources to participate in the investigation.

The report said Mr Biden wants investigators to hunt new intelligence to understand if the Chinese government was involved in a cover up of the leak.

The presence of more evidence to be studied and the seriousness with which efforts are being made to know Covid origin raises questions on whether the government has still not exhausted databases of Chinese communications tracking the movements of lab workers and the pattern of the outbreak in Wuhan.

Along with the US, the interest of governments and health experts across the world have been renewed over the claims that the virus is not natural and may have escaped accidentally from a Chinese laboratory – a theory once shunned by experts after it was heavily pushed by the US Republicans as part of Donald Trump’s rivalry with China.

On Thursday Mr Biden asked US spy agencies to “redouble their efforts” to bring the government “closer to a definitive conclusion” about the origins of the virus.

He promised to make the results of the review public but said not “unless there’s something I’m unaware of.”

A senior Biden officer said the investigations have not hit a dead end but did not describe the kind of computational analysis is needed or what kind of evidence they have.

He told the newspaper that if a new inquiry did not yield results it will be due to China’s obfuscation. The officials believe that China’s obstruction into inquiry and with World Health Organization will help allies joining forces for a stepped-up intelligence cooperation.

Allies like Britain and Australia have already been sharing intelligence with the US but some British intelligence services did not fully support the lab leak theory while others including Australia have been open to it.

The lab leak theory gained more traction recently after a report by the Wall Street Journal said three workers at the Wuhan lab became sick and were hospitalised in November 2019 not long before the first reported cases of Covid.

Biden administration also terminated the inquiry to study the origin of virus which launched under the presidency of Donald Trump over “concerns about the quality of its work.”

China has been however rejecting the allegations and said the foreign ministry accused the US of "political manipulation and blame-shifting" on Thursday. Beijing also said the US has a "dark history" of spreading misinformation.