President Biden has been briefed on a classified report on the intelligence community’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, the White House said Wednesday.
The intelligence community this week concluded its 90-day review of evidence surrounding how the virus originated. Biden was briefed on Tuesday, press secretary Jen Psaki said.
“It was a classified briefing, so of course that’s not information we would provide publicly,” Psaki said.
The intelligence community is preparing an unclassified summary of its findings, which will be released in the coming days. Psaki declined to elaborate on the core findings of the report.
The Washington Post reported late Tuesday that the intelligence community was unable to conclusively determine whether the virus originated in a lab or whether it was passed directly from animals to humans.
Biden in May asked the U.S. intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” to come to a definitive conclusion on the disease’s origins, calling on them to report back to him within 90 days.
Top intelligence officials, including Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, have previously acknowledged that it’s possible the virus could have originated via a laboratory accident, but they have cautioned it would be difficult to come to a definitive conclusion.
Scientists haven’t discovered definitive proof the virus leaked from a lab. But they also have not found hard evidence that shows the virus started in animals before naturally infecting humans, which is why some argue an investigation is needed.