The intelligence agency said it had “low confidence” in the assessment and would continue to evaluate credible information.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has announced that it believes it is “more likely” that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a laboratory leak rather than a natural event.

The CIA issued a “low confidence” assessment after John Ratcliffe was sworn in as director of the top intelligence agency under President Donald Trump on Thursday.

“It remains reasonable for the CIA to continue to evaluate both research-related and natural origin COVID-19 pandemic scenarios,” a spokesman said Saturday.

“We have low confidence in this judgment and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reports or open source information that might alter the CIA’s assessment.”

US media reported that the review was ordered by the administration of former US President Biden and completed before Ratcliffe took office.

Following the CIA’s announcement, three US agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Energy, have now publicly supported the theory that COVID-19 likely escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington rejected the CIA’s assessment, saying it had “fabricated misleading conclusions, poured dirty water on China, and framed it.”

“This is still an old routine of political manipulation to trace the source, which has no credibility. The origin of the virus is a complex scientific issue, and scientists and experts should find the answer through rigorous and meticulous scientific research, rather than let politicians judge it,” the embassy said. Liu Pengyu said.

“We firmly oppose politicizing and stigmatizing the source of the virus, and once again call on everyone to respect science and stay away from conspiracy theories.”

China “always adheres to the spirit of science, openness and transparency,” Liu added, noting that a 2021 joint WHO-China study concluded that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely.”

Four other U.S. intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council said they believed the virus likely emerged through natural transmission.

Ratcliffe told Breitbart News on Friday that the origins of the coronavirus would be a priority “day one.”

“As you know, I have been on record saying that I think our wisdom, our science, and our common sense do indicate that the origin of COVID-19 was a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But the CIA has not made that assessment, or at least no such assessment was made publicly,” Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, told the outlet.

“So I’m going to be focusing on that, looking at the intelligence and making sure the public is aware that the agency is no longer going to sit on the sidelines.”