US Intel Agencies Began Tracking Coronavirus Outbreak as Early as November: Report

New Delhi/Washington: As the deadly coronavirus continues to claim lives in US at an alarming rate, a new report suggests that the country's spy agencies were tracking the rise of covid-19 as early as November. The information has come at a time when President Donald Trump has maintained that he learned about the seriousness of the coronavirus "just prior" to enacting US travel restrictions on China that took effect February 2.

A CNN report quoted its sources as saying that the US intelligence gathered details in November and in the weeks following offered multiple early warnings about the potential severity of the pandemic. However, the exact date of the first report remains unclear.

Intelligence is often only elevated to the highest levels of the government once analysts and officials reach a certain threshold of confidence in their assessment. That day came on January 3, the first day the President's daily briefing included information the US intelligence community had gathered about the contagion in China and the potential it had to spread, including to the US, according to a person briefed on the matter.

But behind the scenes, the work had been going on for weeks, with the CIA and other intelligence agencies combing through their collection to find out what China was beginning to grapple with, the CNN report stated.

ABC News reported earlier on Wednesday that the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency, compiled information in November warning that a new virus was spreading through China's Wuhan region.

A defense official denied any such report existed, telling CNN, "NCMI and the Defense Intelligence Agency spent considerable time over the last 24 hours examining every possible product that could have been identified as related to this topic and have found no such product."

The Pentagon also issued a statement denying the ABC News report late on Wednesday. "As a matter of practice the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters. However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists," Colonel Dr R Shane Day, director of the National Center for Medical Intelligence, was quoted as saying.

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten seemed to push back on reports that the US intelligence community was aware of the coronavirus in November, saying Thursday that the first intelligence reports he saw were in January.

Asked when the first intelligence streams about the virus began to arrive, Hyten said, "We went back and looked at everything in November, December. The first indication we have were the reports out of China in late December that were in the public forum. And the first intel reports I saw were in January.

The question of when the President was first aware of the Covid-19 threat has become politically sensitive as the US death toll surges, the administration's response comes under fire and Trump repeatedly denies it was possible to know how deadly the virus would be.

On Wednesday, Trump said that he only learned about the seriousness of the coronavirus "just prior" to enacting US travel restrictions on China that took effect February 2.