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WASHINGTON – A new assessment by US spy agencies of the origins of Covid-19 that was delivered to the White House on Tuesday failed to definitively conclude whether the new coronavirus jumped to humans naturally, or via a leak of laboratory, in part because of the lack of detailed information from China, two senior US officials said.
The new assessment, which was ordered by President Biden 90 days ago, highlights the administration’s difficult challenge to extract more information from Beijing that would shed light on how the global pandemic began.
This underscores the importance of urging China to share lab records, genomic samples and other data that could shed additional light on the origins of the virus, which has killed more than four million people worldwide, current and former officials said.
“It was a deep dive, but you can’t go as far as the situation allows,” said a US official. “If China doesn’t provide access to certain datasets, you’ll never really know. “
China has balked at efforts by the United States and others to provide this information, presenting the Biden administration with the same dilemma – how to persuade Beijing to cooperate – that the Trump administration faced for almost a year. The massive efforts to pressure China for more information, some details of which had not yet been reported, ended in internal bureaucratic struggles and setbacks.
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