United Stated President Joe Biden Friday attacked China over the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and said that the world deserves answers.
Biden's attacks came after intelligence community released report into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I am grateful for the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals, and while this review has concluded, our efforts to understand the origins of this pandemic will not rest. We will do everything we can to trace the roots of this outbreak that has caused so much pain and death around the world, so that we can take every necessary precaution to prevent it from happening again," Biden said.
"Yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it. To this day, the PRC continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even as the toll of this pandemic continues to rise," he said.
US intelligence agencies remain divided on the origins of the coronavirus but believe China’s leaders did not know about the virus before the start of the global pandemic, according to results released Friday of a review ordered by President Joe Biden.
According to an unclassified summary, four members of the US intelligence community say with low confidence that the virus was initially transmitted from an animal to a human. A fifth intelligence agency believes with moderate confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab.
In May, Biden issued a directive to the 17 main US intelligence agencies, which make up the IC, to deliver a report on the origins of COVID-19 within 90 days.
The cause of the coronavirus remains an urgent public health and security concern worldwide. In the US, many conservatives have accused Chinese scientists of developing COVID-19 in a lab and allowing it to leak.
