This report responds to the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, which called for the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to declassify information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report outlines the IC’s understanding of the WIV, its capabilities, and the actions of its personnel leading up to and in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report does not address the merits of the two most likely pandemic origins hypotheses, nor does it explore other biological facilities in Wuhan other than the WIV. A classified annex to this report includes information that was necessary to exclude from the unclassified portion of this report in order to protect sources and methods, but the information contained in the annex is consistent with the unclassified assessments contained in this report.
This report was drafted by the National Intelligence Officer for Weapons of Mass
Destruction and Proliferation and coordinated with the IC.
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Potential Links Between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Origin of the COVID-19 Pandemic, June 2023 [10 Pages, 1MB]
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