A panel of experts appointed by the World Health Organization to examine the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic published its final report on Friday, arriving at a disappointing conclusion: Scientists remain uncertain about how the most significant health crisis in a century commenced. During a press conference on Friday, Marietjie Venter, the chair of the group, stated that the majority of scientific evidence supports the theory that the novel coronavirus was transmitted to humans from animals.

This conclusion mirrors that of the initial WHO expert group that explored the origins of the pandemic in 2021, when researchers determined that the virus likely transferred from bats to humans through an intermediary animal. At that time, the WHO indicated that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely.”