US National Intelligence: Coronavirus "Not Synthesized" as Biological Weapon

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday released a declassified US intelligence community assessment of the origin of COVID-19.

The evaluation concluded that the Coronavirus (known also as COVID-19) was not synthesized as a biological weapon.

The full report indicated that the Wuhan Institute of Virology "previously created clusters of SARS-like coronaviruses, but the available information does not provide an accurate view of whether SARS Cov-2 was genetically engineered by the said institute.

The report indicated that four US intelligence agencies said with "low confidence" that the virus was initially transmitted from an animal to a human, while a fifth intelligence agency saw with "medium confidence" that the first human infection was linked to a laboratory.

The first human cases of COVID-19 appeared in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

China has repeatedly rejected theories that the virus has leaked from one of its laboratories and has said no more visits are needed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said earlier this month that its new advisory group on dangerous pathogens may be our "last chance" to find out the origin of the "SARS-Cove-2" virus, and called on China to cooperate by providing data on the first cases.

On October 21, the United Nations (UN)  Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the possibility of the continued emergence of new mutated strains of the Coronavirus as a result of the unfair distribution of anti-vaccines among the countries of the world.

Guterres tweeted that the inequality in the distribution of vaccines allows the strains of COVID-19 to evolve to become more dangerous.

The UN chief stressed that a sustainable reduction in the number of cases in any country can only be achieved through a  coordinated and equitable approach to vaccine distribution.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded nearly 240 million infections with the coronavirus globally, including more than 4.8 million deaths from deadly virus infection.

However,  Guterres added that for the first time in two decades, extreme poverty is increasing, noting that last year about 120 million people fell into poverty, as the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the global economy and societies.

He stressed that the unbalanced economic recovery deepens disparities between the North and the South.