WASHINGTON: Presid­ent Joe Biden ordered US intelligence agencies on Wednesday to report to him in three months on whether the Covid-19 virus first emerged in China from an animal source or from a laboratory accident.

Agencies should “redouble their efforts to collect and analyse information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House.

According to Biden, agencies are currently split over the two possible sources for the virus.

President Biden’s order signals an escalation in mounting controversy over how the virus first emerged — through animal contact at a market in Wuhan, China, or through release of the coronavirus from a highly secure research laboratory in the same city.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2021