WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency said the COVID-19 pandemic “more likely” originated from a lab leak than a natural source, shifting its stance after previously saying both scenarios were possible.

The CIA’s new view aligns the agency with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Energy, which say the pandemic that caused more than 7 million deaths worldwide, likely originated from a lab in Wuhan, China. Other U.S. agencies have assessed that the initial infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal.

“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” a spokesperson for the agency said Saturday in a statement.

The announcement follows the arrival of CIA Director John Ratcliffe, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the agency, who has been vocal on the issue. In an interview with Breitbart published on Friday — a day after his swearing-in — Ratcliffe said the CIA’s assessment of COVID’s origins would be a “day-one thing for me.”

“I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines,” Ratcliffe told Breitbart.

The CIA continues to assess both origin scenarios as plausible and will evaluate any available intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change its assessment, the spokesperson said. A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.

The agency’s shift in stance stems from closer scrutiny of existing information, said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, adding that no new collected information led to the change in position.

The CIA’s analysis was carried out weeks before Ratcliffe’s arrival after former director Bill Burns urged the agency to take a position one way or the other, though he withheld any view on which stance to take, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Ratcliffe decided to declassify the assessment, the official added.

In his Senate confirmation hearing this month, Ratcliffe outlined his plans for the agency to heighten its focus on the threats posed by China and to expand the intelligence collected on the U.S.’s biggest adversary.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton said he was “pleased” the CIA concluded in the Biden administration’s final days that the lab-leak theory was the most plausible explanation of COVID-19’s origins and commended Ratcliffe for releasing the conclusion.

“Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world,” Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, said in statement.

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