The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that China is “doing everything possible to frustrate efforts to uncover the source of the global pandemic.” But Beijing has accused Washington of political manipulation and smearing China.
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The director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, has publicly announced for the first time that, in the opinion of the FBI, “the coronavirus most likely originated in a laboratory controlled by the Chinese government.”
“For a long time, while evaluating the origin of covid, the FBI concluded that the origin of the pandemic was most likely related to a potential incident in the laboratory,” the director of the FBI said in an interview on the TV channel “Fox News”.
For the first time, K. Ray publicly confirmed the conclusion of the closed FBI study on how the pandemic virus originated, notes the British broadcasting company BBC.
The lab leak theory has been dismissed by many researchers as lacking evidence. Several US government agencies have reached conclusions that differ from the FBI’s statement. Several research groups believe, but with a low degree of confidence, that the virus did not originate in the laboratory, but entered the human body from animals.
The White House has admitted that there is no consensus in the US government about the origin of the covid virus. The representative of the White House National Security Council, John Kirby, has announced that US President Joe Biden supports the consolidated efforts of government authorities to discover the origin of Covid. “We haven’t hit the common ground yet,” Kirby admitted.
In 2021, after a joint investigation by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Chinese authorities, it was declared that the laboratory leak theory was “extremely unlikely”.
Analysts note that the investigation conducted by the WHO and China was sharply criticized because the Chinese side denied WHO experts access to many materials. WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus has called for a new investigation, adding that “all hypotheses remain valid and further research should be carried out”.
FBI Director Wray made the announcement a day after US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns called on China to be more open about what happened three years ago at the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory.
Several studies suggest that the virus may have been transferred from animals to humans, possibly at the Wuhan fish and wildlife market.
David Robertson, a professor at the University of Glasgow and head of the bioinformatics laboratory, believes that the evidence collected so far shows that the natural origin theory of the virus is still the most likely.
FBI Director Ray has said that China is “doing everything it can to frustrate efforts to uncover the source of the global pandemic.”
In its response statement, Beijing has accused Washington of “political manipulation” and “slandering” China. Democratic congressman Seth Moulton from Massachusetts believes that China has not wanted to properly investigate the origin of covid, but has done everything to sweep it under the carpet.
“It is impossible to work with them (representatives of China),” WHO representative Tarik Jaraševičs admitted. “We have repeatedly and publicly said that in the investigation of the origin of Covid, the Chinese side must be given access to information, and if this does not happen, efforts to understand the origin of the virus will be hindered,” he said.
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