lab in chiwuhan, china. and in east palestine, the new technique to track contaminated water from that city. and the growing concern to other cities taking in truckloads of contaminated soil. and an image in oklahoma, cnn is on the scene. welcome to the lead i m jake tapper. we start with the groundbreaking assertion with the u.s. energy department that the covid-19 pandemic likely began from a lab leak in wuhan, china. this all comes after the energy department updated its 2021 report with this claim, saying it made the new conclusion, based on new evidence coming to light. two sources telling cnn the department is issuing the report with, quote, low confidence. that s a term that doesn t mean that they don t believe their own conclusion. it means that the evidence as of now is only circumstantial. the new assertion reveals that the u.s. intelligence community is more divided than ever on how the pandemic began. four other agencies in the u.s. government said the outbr
explanations where perhaps something emerged in animals. and there was some laboratory involvement in some way, whether it was collecting specimens or infections with laboratory workers. but there s no evidence that i ve seen in the public domain that was any type of a smoking gun for a lab leak. on the other hand, we have seen animal spillover events with sars 1 and many other organisms. nature is a pretty good-by bio terrorist. and whether that s through animal activists or people encroaching on animal environments that have not been encroached on before and getting infected, we need to be safer. 20 million lives and $10 trillion in economic losses from this pandemic. we need to do much better keeping countries safe. dr. tom frieden, thank you so much. the vastly different plans
to the team to laboratory records. and thatjust raises some questions as to why the laboratory involvement was rated as extremely unlikely. and i think that s over calling it. i think it s less likely, not extremely unlikely. professor gupta was one of 18 international scientists who publicly criticised the results of the joint mission, calling for a proper investigation which should be transparent, objective, data driven and are subject to independent oversight. the who itself also had concerns about the experts s findings. privately it criticised the report for not providing specific evidence for saying the laboratory incident theory was extremely unlikely. and out of the four hypotheses they looked at, you could say some are more or less likely. this doctor and infectious diseases expert. what i know is that
it concluded that a spill over from an infected animal was the most likely triggerfor the pandemic, followed by the possibility that frozen food came from another country into china, contaminated, and then a laboratory incident was at the bottom of the list of hypotheses, described as extremely unlikely. what we were hearing as a result of the investigation was that this was definitely not a laboratory related incident. that is how it was interpreted. we ve got to remember full access was not granted to the team to laboratory records. and thatjust raises some questions as to why the laboratory involvement was rated as extremely unlikely. i think that is over calling it. i think it is less likely, not extremely unlikely. professor gupta was one of 18 international scientists who publicly criticised the results of the joint mission, calling for a proper investigation which should be transparent, objective, data driven and are subject to independent oversight.
that is the way it was interpreted. we ve got to remember full access was not granted to the team to laboratory records. and thatjust raises some questions as to why the laboratory involvement was rated as extremely unlikely. i think that is over calling it. i think it is less likely, not extremely unlikely. professor gupta was one of 18 international scientists who publicly criticised the results of the joint mission, calling for a proper investigation which should be transparent, objective, data driven and subject to independent oversight. the who itself also had concerns about the experts findings. privately, it criticised the official report for not providing specific evidence for saying the lab incident theory was extremely unlikely. out of the four hypotheses they looked at, you could say some were more likely or less likely. dr maria van kerkhove is an infectious diseases expert