The US intelligence community on Thursday said that it had concluded that the novel coronavirus did originate in China but it was not man-made or engineered.

“The Covid-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified,” said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) which coordinates between 17 US spy agencies, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The ODNI had said that US intelligence agencies were in the broad scientific consensus that the virus that has led to the Covid-19 pandemic was not man-made. However, the agencies will continue to examine new information related to the virus “to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

"The entire Intelligence Community has been consistently providing critical support to US policymakers and those responding to the Covid-19 virus, which originated in China," it said.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he had seen evidence linking the virus to a Wuhan lab refusing to provide any further clarification on the same according to the Wall Street Journal report.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) las week had said that the novel coronavirus is likely to have originated in bats and not manipulated or produced in a lab based on the evidence so far, according to media reports.

“All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said at a press briefing in Geneva as quoted by Reuters .

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