An analysis by the U.S. Defense Department’s intelligence agency concluded five years ago that the virus that caused COVID-19 could have been engineered in a Chinese laboratory and later escaped to spawn the pandemic that eventually killed millions of people, recently released documents obtained by US Right to Know show.
The never-before-published analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) points out that the lab in question – the Wuhan Institute of Virology – was highly capable of genetic manipulation, and includes an assessment that the genome of the coronavirus strain that caused COVID-19 is “consistent with the hypothesis” that it was “a lab-engineered virus” that “escaped from containment.”
The analysis by scientists in the DIA, which is charged with collecting and analyzing medical and health intelligence as part of its operations, also concluded that the virus that became known as SARS-CoV-2 could have come from “a bank” of bat coronaviruses in the Wuhan lab that was under the research of senior virologist, Dr. Shi Zhengli.