U.S. intelligence officials said to have untapped evidence on Covid-19 origins

U.S. President Joe Biden's instructions to the intelligence community to redouble its efforts in investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic came on the heels of intelligence officials informing the White House that they possessed unreviewed evidence necessitating greater computer analysis that could potentially provide answers, The New York Times reported.

The paper cited senior administration officials, who opted not to detail the new evidence or the computational analysis to be done. The disclosure raises the question of whether the government fully examined existing intelligence and public health information in seeking out the virus's emergence.

It also comes as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued an unusual public statement Thursday on the status of its intelligence gathering into the genesis of the pandemic, publicizing divisions within the intelligence community about whether the virus escaped from a lab in China or occurred naturally.

Administration officials told the Times that the White House wants U.S. allies to participate more strongly in investigating the possibility that the virus originated in a Chinese lab, a scenario that had previously been considered less likely.

The probe has not hit a dead end, a senior Biden administration official told the paper, adding that it will now draw on federal scientific resources, including the national labs, that had not previously been tapped for it.

A Biden administration official told the Times that if the new investigation did not produce explanations, it would be due to China's obfuscation. Current officials told the Times that the main focus of the new inquiry is to increase pandemic preparedness going forward, and administration officials think that the new intelligence effort, combined with China misleading the WHO, will provide a chance for greater intelligence sharing and teamwork.

Administration and intelligence officials told the Times that tracking down the virus' inception would require efforts from not only scientists, but also spies. Top officials have told the spy agencies that their scientifically focused teams will play a key part in the undertaking, after months of work on the subject already.