United States military intelligence reportedly warned White House officials in November that a contagion was spreading in China's Wuhan region, posing a threat to the population, ABC News reported.
The US military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) detailed concerns about what is now known as COVID-19 in November after analyzing intercepted digital data and satellite imagery.
The report warned that an uncontrolled outbreak may pose a threat to US forces in Asia. According to one of the sources cited by ABC, "Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event."
The source said that the report "was then briefed multiple times" to the White House, the Pentagon's Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The intelligence report was also disseminated to the National Security Council as well as decision-makers across the federal government in December. According to ABC, the information appeared with a detailed explanation in US President Donald Trump's daily brief.
Analyses were reportedly circulating through confidential channels within the US government around Thanksgiving, raising alarms that China's leadership knew the outbreak had spiraled out of control, keeping the information from health agencies and foreign governments.
"The timeline of the intel side of this may be further back than we’re discussing," the source cited by ABC said of the early reports from Wuhan. "But this was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on."