President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he has ordered the U.S. Intelligence Community to "redouble their efforts" into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, following conflicting reports from U.S. spies as to whether its origins were natural or a lab accident.

In a statement Wednesday, Biden said that the Intelligence Community had given him two scenarios for the origins of the pandemic based on their most up-to-date analysis. Those scenarios are the current accepted theory that the virus originated from human-to-animal contact--which may or may not have been a bat--at a Wuhan wet market, and the other where the virus started from an accidental laboratory leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"The U.S. Intelligence Community has 'coalesced around two likely scenarios' but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question," Biden said. "Here is their current position: 'while two elements in the IC leans toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter--each with low or moderate confidence--the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other."

Biden added that the U.S. will work with "like-minded" global partners to pressure China to participate in a "full, transparent, evidence-based international investigations and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence."

After more than a year of researching, scientists have yet to determine the virus's origins. The first confirmed cases were reported in Wuhan, China back in late 2019, with scientists theorizing that the virus jumped by an animal to a human since coronaviruses are zoonotic diseases.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that U.S. intelligence indicates that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became ill back in November 2019 to the point of needing hospital care with a respiratory disease. The report reopened the origin question for many health officials, including the U.S. top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Fauci told U.S. lawmakers at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that while pandemics have historically evolved naturally from an "animal reservoir," no one knows the true origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, "which is the reason why we are in favor of further investigation."

Understanding the origin of the coronavirus may help scientists and health officials better combat the global pandemic and prevent another one from occurring.