By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters). The U.S. intelligence agencies have said that it is possible they will never identify COVID-19’s source. On Friday, they published a more thorough version of their assessment of whether coronavirus was either transmitted from one animal to another or leaked from a laboratory.

In a classified report, the Office of the U.S. Direct of National Intelligence (ODNI), stated that both a natural and a laboratory leak were plausible explanations as to how SARS-COV-2 infected people. Analysts disagree about which hypothesis is most likely, or whether any final assessment can be made.

The report dismissed any suggestion that the coronavirus had originated as a biological weapon. It stated that those who supported this theory were not allowed to access the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and was accused of spreading misinformation.

Friday’s report is an update to a 90-day assessment that President Joe Biden released in August. It was published amid political infighting about how to assign blame to China, rather than to governments who may have not acted quickly enough to protect their citizens.

Donald Trump was a former Republican President who lost his election bid due to the US pandemic that decimated the economy. Many of Trump’s supporters called COVID-19 “China virus” and referred him as such.

The explanation that the virus originated naturally was strongly supported by some U.S. spy agency. However, there is not much evidence to support this assertion. The virus spread naturally and widely among wild animals over the past months.

According to the ODNI, four U.S. intelligence agencies and a multiagency agency body had “low confidence” COVID-19 was derived from an infected animal.

However, one agency indicated that they had moderate confidence in the possibility of the human COVID-19 first infection. This was most likely due to a laboratory accident involving experiments or animal handling at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

U.S. spy agencies are not confident that new information will be available to them that can provide a definitive explanation as to the source of COVID-19.

This report stated that the U.S. and international scientific communities lacked clinical samples or an understanding complete of epidemiological data from COVID-19’s earliest COVID-19 patients. The U.S. could also revisit its inconclusive findings if further evidence emerges.

China is being criticized for its inability to fully cooperate with international investigations into COVID’s origins.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment.