China withholding 'critical information': Challenges before analysts on COVID-19 origins

US President Joe Biden on Friday accused China of withholding 'critical information' on the origins of the COVID-19 virus. This comes at a time when the US intelligence community is split on whether the virus escaped from a lab but remained adamant that the virus was not a bioweapon and was not genetically engineered.

Even as the world reels under the COVID-19 pandemic, the unclassified summary of the intelligence report is eagerly awaited by all. On the pathogen's origins, four agencies along with the National Intelligence Council judging in favor of natural exposure to an animal as the likely explanation, and one agency favoring the lab leak theory. Analysts at three agencies were unable to reach a conclusion.

The United States is also of the opinion that Chinese officials did not have any knowledge of the virus before the outbreak of the pandemic which has already claimed 4.5 million lives across the world.

"Critical information about the origins of this pandemic exists in the People's Republic of China, yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it," Biden said in a statement.

Joe Biden said the United States would continue to work with allies to press Beijing to share more information and cooperate with the World Health Organisation.

Challenges before the analysts

China has rejected calls from the United States and other countries for a renewed origin probe of the COVID-19 virus.

In January this year, a special World Health Organisation team went to China to collect information regarding the origin of the virus but the report proved inconclusive.

The intelligence community and global scientists lack clinical samples or epidemiological data from the earliest COVID-19 cases making it difficult to analyse the source for the origin of the virus.

There is a lot of variation in analytic views and this is due to the differences in how agencies weigh intelligence reporting and scientific publications.

The natural origin hypothesis that the virus emerged in bats and then passed to humans, likely via an intermediary species was widely accepted.

However, as time passed scientists were unable to find a virus in either bats or another animal that matches the genetic signature of SARS-CoV-2.

This led to investigators being more open to considering a lab leak involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which carried out bat coronavirus research.

(With Agency Inputs)