By Dan McCaleb | The Center Square
(Worthy News) – The COVID-19 virus “more likely” originated from a research lab in China, the CIA now says, though it has “low confidence” in its determination.
Multiple media outlets are reporting the CIA shifted its position from being undecided on the origin to saying it more likely came from the Wuhan lab rather than from human exposure to an infected animal such as a bat.
“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement, according to NBC News. “CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
Other federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy and former FBI Director Christopher Wray, have said the Wuhan lab is the likely origin of the COVID-19 virus, but expressed a similar lack of confidence as the CIA.
COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, leading elected officials across the U.S. and the world to issue stay-at-home orders that led to millions of job losses. More than 1 million Americans died from COVID-19.
Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
More Worthy News
The world awoke Friday to a new geopolitical reality after U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, concluded high-stakes talks in Beijing that highlighted China’s emergence as a near-equal superpower to the United States amid tensions over Taiwan, Iran, trade, technology, and military rivalry.
Pakistan’s hardline Islamist party and movement, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), has been accused of involvement in a massive “blasphemy business” scheme targeting Christians and other Pakistanis charged under the country’s controversial blasphemy laws, despite being banned by the government.
Malaysian authorities confirmed Friday that at least 12 people were killed after a boat carrying undocumented migrants sank off the country’s western coast, while neighboring Indonesia was struck by a strong earthquake.
Christians and rights campaigners in Pakistan have demanded “a transparent investigation” into the death of a Christian brick kiln worker allegedly poisoned by a Muslim resident in the country’s east, while another Christian laborer was killed in a separate case.
Latvia’s government collapsed Thursday after Prime Minister Evika Siliņa resigned amid a political crisis triggered by Ukrainian drones crashing inside Latvian territory near the Russian border.
Hungary’s new center-right government has pledged to restore the church status of the Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship (MET), headed by 74-year-old Pastor Gábor Iványi, a longtime critic — and former ally — of ex-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The Trump administration is widening its campaign against waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government after investigators reportedly uncovered sweeping schemes involving Medicaid-funded home health businesses, food benefit theft, student visa exploitation, and immigration fraud across the United States.