The new CIA chief: I think the coronavirus came out of the lab.

But the intelligence agency warned that there were low “trust” on this definition, it broadcast Telegraphy.

A spokesman said that a <x0ory related to research” of the pandemic, “has more likely than a natural origin based on the available” report.

The decision to publish this assessment marks one of the first to be taken by the new CIA director, John Ratcliffe, appointed by Donald Trump, who took over the agency on Thursday.

Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during President Trump's first term, has long favoured the laboratory's leak theory, claiming that Coddy probably came from a leak at the Wuhan Virology Institute.

The institute is 40 minutes by car from the Juanan market, where the first case of infection occurred.

In an interview with Breitbart News released Friday, Ratcliffe said he wanted the CIA to abandon its neutral position on the origin of the virus, and “to be marginalised by one side”.

“One of the things I've been talking about is addressing the threat from China at a number of fronts, and that goes back to the reason why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been on the sidelines for five years in failing to make an assessment of the origin of COVID”, he said.

This is one thing for me”, he added.

But officials told American media that the new assessment was not based on new intelligence, and preceded the Trump administration.

The revision was reportedly ordered in recent weeks of the Biden Administration, and ended before Trump took office Monday.