The Trump administration has replaced the government’s main portal for information about Covid with a website arguing that the coronavirus leaked from a lab, throwing its weight behind a theory of the pandemic’s origins that is so far not backed by direct evidence and that has divided intelligence agencies.

特朗普政府用一个声称新冠病毒系实验室泄露的网站取代了政府有关新冠病毒信息的主要门户网站，支持一种迄今为止没有直接证据支持、且在情报机构中存在分歧的新冠病毒起源理论。

Covid.gov and Covidtests.gov, federal websites that used to deliver information about Covid and allow people to order tests, now redirect to the lab leak web page. Carrying an image of President Trump flanked by the words “Lab Leak,” the new page is illustrated by a satellite image of Wuhan, China, the city where Covid began spreading, and says it will describe “the true origins of Covid-19.”

Covid.gov和Covidtests.gov这两个联邦网站曾经提供有关新冠的信息，此外公众还可以在上面定购病毒检测，现在它们被重定向到有关实验室泄漏信息的网页。新页面上有特朗普总统的照片，旁边是“实验室泄漏”字样，还有新冠病毒开始传播的城市——中国武汉的卫星图像，称该网站将陈述“新冠病毒的真正起源”。

The website notes that the city is home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a coronavirus lab that had been involved with research projects that some scientists considered dangerous. It also alludes to concerns that the lab had conducted its work under improper safety conditions. Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency cited those concerns when the agency recently shifted its position to favor the lab leak hypothesis.

该网站称，武汉是武汉病毒研究所的所在地，后者是一个冠状病毒实验室，曾参与一些科学家认为危险的研究项目。网站还暗指该实验室在不适当的安全条件下开展工作。中央情报局的官员前不久改变立场、支持实验室泄漏假说时，也提到了这样的担忧。

But the page does not address other details about the early spread of the virus, like where patients lived and worked and genetic clues from an illegal wild-animal market in Wuhan where many cases were detected. Many scientists believe that information points to the virus having spilled from animals into people at the market.

但该网页没有提及有关病毒早期传播的其他细节，比如患者在哪里生活和工作，以及在武汉一个非法野生动物市场发现的基因线索，在该市场发现了许多病例。许多科学家认为，这些信息表明病毒是从市场上的动物传播到人身上的。

Since Mr. Trump returned to office, White House officials have begun describing the lab leak theory as “confirmable truth.” The C.I.A. shifted its assessment with “low confidence”; the agency’s decision was not based on new intelligence, but rather a closer look at evidence about safety conditions in Wuhan labs.

自特朗普再次当选以来，白宫官员开始将实验室泄漏说描述为“可证实的事实”。中情局以“低置信度”做出了新的评估；这一决定并非基于新的情报，而是基于对武汉实验室安全状况证据的仔细研究。

The White House stance masks uncertainty within the ranks of government intelligence agencies about the origins of the pandemic. Intelligence officials and scientists have noted that, since 2020, China has withheld crucial information that could have shed light on the question.

白宫的立场掩盖了政府情报机构内部对疫情起源的不确定性。情报官员和科学家指出，自2020年以来，中国一直隐瞒可能揭示这个问题的关键信息。

The Energy Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have favored the idea that a lab leak may have caused the pandemic. Five intelligence bodies considered theories of a non-laboratory origin — that the coronavirus spread among animals in nature, and then jumped to people at the wild-animal market or another location — more likely.

能源部和联邦调查局倾向于认为可能是实验室泄漏导致大流行。五个情报机构认为非实验室起源的理论可能性更大——新冠病毒首先在自然界的动物之间传播，然后在野生动物市场或其他地方传染给人类。

A declassified report from Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2023 said researchers at the Wuhan virology institute probably failed to use sufficient safety measures at least sometimes. But, the report said, intelligence agencies have found nothing that tells them that work at the laboratory caused the pandemic.

国家情报总监办公室的一份解密报告称，武汉病毒研究所的研究人员可能至少有时没有采取足够的安全措施。但是，报告说，情报机构没有发现任何证据表明实验室的工作导致了大流行。

That report was released two years after the Biden administration, in 2021, ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate anew the origins of the virus.

这份报告是在拜登政府于2021年下令美国情报机构重新调查该病毒的起源两年后发布的。

Around that same time, mainstream scientists called for an open investigation of the virus’s origins that took seriously the possibility of a lab leak. Some expressed frustration that colleagues earlier in the pandemic had been too quick to dismiss the idea, including experts chosen by the World Health Organization who wrote a report in collaboration with Chinese scientists.

Since then, inquiries by intelligence agencies and congressional investigators have yielded no definitive answers.

从那以后，情报机构和国会调查人员的调查一直没有得到明确的答案。

Researchers who specialize in tracing outbreaks, including some who joined calls for evenhanded investigations of the origins, also did additional analyses of early cases and viral genomes, including new clues that had emerged from China. Those analyses pointed to the pandemic’s starting at the illegal wild-animal market.

专门追踪疫情的研究人员，包括一些参与呼吁对疫情起源进行公正调查的研究人员，还对早期病例和病毒基因组进行了更多分析，其中包括来自中国的新线索。这些分析指出，疫情始于非法野生动物市场。

The Trump administration’s purging of the old Covid websites reflects a broader practice of officials recently scrapping health websites that do not align with their views, including ones related to climate change and L.G.B.T.Q. people. (Some of those pages were later restored.)

特朗普政府对原新冠网站的大清洗，体现了官员们近日的一项广泛行动，旨在清除与其观点不一致的医疗健康网站，还包括与气候变化和LGBTQ人群有关的网站。（其中一些页面后来被恢复。）

And it has turned what used to be the government’s main portals for disseminating reliable information about the virus into a vehicle for attacking the administration’s political enemies, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led a federal research institute that awarded funding to a virus-hunting nonprofit that worked with scientists in Wuhan.

特朗普政府还把曾经是政府传播有关病毒可靠信息的主要门户网站变成了攻击政敌的工具，当中包括安东尼·福奇，他领导的一家联邦研究机构向一家与武汉科学家合作寻找病毒的非营利组织提供了资金。

While Covid is killing far fewer people than at the height of the pandemic, the United States has continued to record hundreds of Covid deaths each week in recent months.

In addition to arguing for a lab leak, the website condemns the W.H.O. for its decisions during the pandemic, attacks former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York for sending Covid patients to nursing homes, and criticizes measures that were used in efforts to prevent the early spread of the virus, like lockdowns and masking.

除了主张实验室泄漏理论外，现在的网站还谴责世卫组织在疫情期间的决定，攻击纽约州前州长安德鲁·科莫将新冠病毒患者送入疗养院的做法，并批评为防止病毒早期传播而采取的措施，如封锁和戴口罩。

The new website’s case for a lab leak contains significant inaccuracies. It begins by saying, of Covid, that “the virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.” That appears to be a reference to the furin cleavage site, a feature that helps the virus get inside cells.

新网站关于实验室泄漏的说法有很多不准确之处。该网站一开始就声称，新冠病毒“具有自然界中没有的生物学特征”。这似乎是指呋喃裂解位点，一种有助于病毒进入细胞的特性。

In the very early days of the pandemic, scientists themselves were alarmed by the presence of that feature. But as they studied it more closely, they found that furin cleavage sites are in fact common in other coronaviruses, even if they have not so far been detected in the closest known relatives of the pandemic virus.

在大流行的早期，科学家们也对这一特性的存在感到震惊。但随着研究的深入，他们发现，呋喃裂解位点其实在其他冠状病毒中也很常见，尽管迄今为止在大流行病病毒的已知近亲中尚未检测到。

Scientists who have scrutinized the furin cleavage site have said it contains many features showing it was not engineered. They have argued, in fact, that constructing a virus in a lab would most likely result in that site being deleted.

对呋喃裂解位点有大量研究的科学家说，其中的许多特征表明它不是经过工程改造的。他们认为，事实上，如果在实验室中构建病毒，很可能导致该位点被删除。

The new website also says that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology “were sick with Covid-like symptoms in the fall of 2019,” suggesting that the virus was spreading at the lab before it began infecting people at the wild-animal market.

新网站还称，武汉病毒研究所的研究人员“在2019年秋天出现了类似新冠病毒感染的症状”，这表明该病毒在开始感染野生动物市场的人之前就在实验室传播了。

But the 2023 report from the director of national intelligence complicates that assessment. That report says that “some of the symptoms were not consistent with Covid-19.”

The institute’s workers, the report concludes, “experienced a range of symptoms consistent with colds or allergies with accompanying symptoms typically not associated with Covid-19, and some of them were confirmed to have been sick with other illnesses unrelated to Covid-19.”

该报告得出结论，该研究所的工作人员“出现了一系列与感冒或过敏症状一致的症状，伴有通常与新冠感染无关的症状，其中一些人被证实患有与新冠感染无关的其他疾病。”

That Wuhan held a large coronavirus lab is not a smoking gun, scientists said: A number of large Chinese cities have labs that reported studying viruses like those the Wuhan institute worked on.

科学家们说，武汉拥有一个大型冠状病毒实验室并不能说明问题：中国许多大城市都有实验室报告了与武汉研究所类似的病毒研究。

Scientific studies of the virus’s origins have found, among other things, that early Covid patients lived around the wild-animal market in a pattern that could not be explained by chance, and that the virus had appeared to spill over from animals into people working or shopping at the wild-animal market on multiple occasions.

对病毒起源的科学研究发现，除其他因素之外，早期的新冠感染者生活在野生动物市场周围，这一模式无法用偶然解释，而且病毒似乎曾经多次从动物传播到在该野生动物市场工作或购物的人身上。

That scenario is also consistent, researchers have said, with samples taken from the market that contained the coronavirus along with genetic material belonging to raccoon dogs, which were being sold at the market.

研究人员说，这种情况也与从市场上采集的样本一致，这些样本中含有冠状病毒，以及在该市场上出售的貉的遗传物质。

The director of national intelligence has said there was no indication that the Wuhan virology institute had been in possession of the pandemic coronavirus “or a close progenitor” — a virus that could have become the one that caused the pandemic — before the outbreak.

国家情报总监表示，没有迹象表明武汉病毒研究所在疫情暴发前拥有导致疫情的新冠病毒“或其近祖病毒”——也就是最终可能变成大流行病毒的病毒。