After over three years of speculation and differing opinions within the intelligence community, the US Energy Department has released a report concluding that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory leak in China.
The Energy Department's conclusion now aligns with that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which also suggests that the virus spread due to an accident at a Chinese laboratory.
However, four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, continue to maintain that the virus likely resulted from natural transmission, while two agencies remain undecided.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) was one of the first to report on this development, Tova O'Brien spoke with Warren Strobel, one of the reporters who broke the story, to provide more information on how and why the Energy Department arrived at this conclusion.
"They're one of 18 US intelligence agencies, they have a lot of expertise in technical matters like biology and the US government came into possession of new intelligence," Strobel said.
"[WSJ] weren't able to learn what that was, but that new information was enough to make the Energy Department conclude that a lab leak was more likely than the natural transmission of the virus."
While the Energy Department made its judgment with 'low confidence' there are still mixed views from other departments about the origin of the virus, O'Brien asked Strobel how we can trust the Energy Department report is right.
"I think the larger picture is that the US intelligence community and indeed the world doesn't know yet after three years where this virus comes from.
"US intelligence agencies are still split, we tried to make that clear in our story, we certainly felt it was important enough that a major US government department had switched its view and that they issued an updated classified report."
O'Brien and Strobel go on to discuss how the lab leak originated as fringe theory, listen to the full interview between Warren Strobel and Tova above.
You can also download the full interview on the Tova podcast, and listen on the go.
