On Monday, US President Joe Biden signed a law that plans to release as many documents as possible on hitherto classified intelligence activities on the origins of the coronavirus. According to US government agencies, these documents do not contain elements that clearly establish the origin of the virus: however, Biden’s decision is considered important for his administration’s commitment to transparency and, as the president himself said, so that the public can have “as much information as possible about the origin” of the pandemic, on which discussions have been underway for some time now.
The provision had already been approved by the United States Senate and House in early March: it refers in particular to any information related to the activities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and to “potential links” between the research work conducted in the facility and the first outbreak of COVID-19.
The FBI believes that the origin of the pandemic may be linked to a laboratory accident in China, a hypothesis that emerged in October 2021, when some American intelligence documents had already been made public. Other US intelligence agencies, however, continue to have divergent hypotheses on the origin of the coronavirus and believe that the assessments that have led to these considerations are weak. China has always strongly rejected the hypothesis of a laboratory accident, also citing the conclusions of the World Health Organization, which called it “very unlikely”.
