President Donald Trump on Thursday said — without offering any evidence — that he has a high degree of confidence that the coronavirus outbreak originated from a laboratory in China.

"I can't tell you that. I'm not allowed to tell you that," Trump said at a White House event when asked what evidence he has seen to make him believe that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

That lab is in the region that saw the first big outbreak of what is now a world-wide pandemic that has infected more than 3.2 million people.

Trump's comments went much further than a statement from the top US intelligence agency on Thursday, which said, for the first time, that it, "Concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified."

But the Office of Director of National Intelligence added that the American intelligence community "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."

Before Trump spoke Thursday, The New York Times reported that senior Trump administration officials "have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory" that the Wuhan laboratory was the point of oring for the outbreak.

"The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic," The Times noted.

Trump initially was asked by a reporter at the White House on Thursday about the origins of the virus, and answered, "You have heard all different things. Three or four different concepts as to how it came out."

"We should have the answer to that in the not-so-distant future and that will determine a lot how I feel about China," the president said.