Three years ago this Saturday, the World Health Organization declared the global Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic.
A few days later, the world came to a halt -- and in the months and years that followed, countries went in and out of lockdown, new variants sparked fear and frustration, and societies adjusted to a new abnormal.
Now, with the planet's longest and strictest lockdowns behind us, attention is returning to a still unanswered question: How did it all begin?
"It just still remains unknown at this particular point," Dr. Anthony Fauci, who as former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases helped lead the US response to Covid, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night.
"We have to keep an open mind about this until there's definitive evidence."
Fauci was reacting to a renewed debate over the pandemic's origins that is gathering pace in US intelligence and political circles.
A group of eight Republican senators is pressing Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide them with the raw materials that informed the intelligence community's latest assessment, according to a letter they sent Haines on Monday.
Earlier this year, Congress received a summary of the findings of the intelligence community's continued investigation into the origins of Covid-19. But the Republican senators – now expressing skepticism about the summary report itself – are specifically requesting "the actual individual IC [intelligence community] assessments" behind it.
The request was prompted by a recent low confidence assessment from the Department of Energy that Covid-19 most likely originated from a laboratory leak in China. The assessment – which matches a moderate confidence finding by the FBI – remains the minority view within the intelligence community, but it has reanimated debate worldwide.
Fauci told CNN it was "tough to tell" whether the FBI and the Department of Energy are correct in their cautious assessments that a lab leak may have released Covid-19 into society.
But like many around the world, he's keen to find out. "If there's a possibility – which there is, certainly; we haven't ruled it out – of there being a lab leak, there are things that you can do to prevent the recurrence of these things," he explained.
"For example, the data showing that it might be a natural occurrence would make you want to be very careful about the animal-human interface and make sure that we have strict regulation of bringing animals into wet markets.
"If it turns out to be a lab leak, you want to be very much more stringent in the controls of the experiments that you allow to be done," Fauci said.
The intelligence suggestions have sparked an angry backlash from China, and the battle for answers could have geopolitical ramifications throughout 2023.
Whether we'll arrive at a conclusive finding, though, is far from clear.
"It is relevant to understand," Fauci said. "Whether or not we ever will know, Anderson, I'm not sure, but it certainly is important to know."
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