The CIA on Saturday offered a new assessment on the origin of the Covid outbreak, saying the coronavirus is "more likely" to have leaked from a Chinese lab than to have come from animals.
But the intelligence agency cautioned it had "low confidence" in this determination.
A spokesperson said that a "research-related origin" of the pandemic "is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting".
The decision to release that assessment marks one of the first made by the CIA's new director John Ratcliffe, appointed by Donald Trump, who took over the agency on Thursday.