COVID-19 most likely originated in a Chinese government-controlled laboratory. This was stated by FBI director Christopher Wray, quoted by the BBC.
The FBI has long believed that the origin of the pandemic was most likely a potential laboratory accident, he explained. This is the first public confirmation of classified FBI information about how the pandemic virus emerged.
China has denied the leak from a laboratory in Wuhancalling the accusation libel.
Ray’s comments come a day after the US ambassador to China called on the country to be more honest about the origins of COVID-19. According to the FBI director, China is doing everything it can to try to thwart and obfuscate efforts to identify the source of the global pandemic. And that’s unfortunate for everyone, he added.
Some studies suggest the virus made the jump from animals to humans in Wuhan, China, possibly at the city’s seafood and wildlife market. The market is a 40-minute drive from a world-leading virus laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducts research on coronaviruses.
Other US government agencies have drawn different conclusions than the FBI. The US Department of Energy has rated it with “low confidence” that Covid leaked from a lab.
In the US, there is still no consensus on the origin of the coronavirus
However, according to the Department of Energy, the virus likely leaked from a laboratory in China
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby indicated that US President Joe Biden supports efforts to find out how COVID-19 started.
An unclassified report released by a senior US intelligence official in October 2021 said four US intelligence agencies assessed with “low confidence” that it originated from an infected animal or related virus. For months, at the height of the pandemic, the lab leak hypothesis was widely dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory.
A World Health Organization (WHO) investigation called the lab leak theory unlikelybut after deep criticism of that investigation, the agency’s director general called for a new investigation.
COVID-19 first emerged in late 2019 and has killed nearly seven million people.
