The nuanced finding suggests the agency believes the totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely than a natural origin.

This has seemingly begun with Ratcliffe authorizing the declassifying of a report that was undertaken during the tenure of former CIA director William Burns. To be clear, this is not a new document, and it does not report any new intelligence or analysis.

The Central Intelligence Agency has assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely to have emerged from a lab than from nature, an agency spokesperson said on Saturday. The agency had for years said it could not conclude whether COVID-19 was the result of a lab incident or originated in nature.