The director of the US federal police (FBI), Christopher Wraybelieves that the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus fIt was “probably” caused by a leak in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, epicenter of the disease. “The FBI has maintained for quite some time that the origins of the pandemic probably lie in a possible incident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News in an interview.
“I’ll just make the point that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing everything they can to try to thwart and obfuscate the work that’s being done here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing. And that is unfortunate for everyone,” added the security official.
Wray has explained that the FBI has specialists who focus on “the dangers of biological threats”which include elements such as the appearance of new viruses such as COVID-19 and are concerned that these threats do not fall “into the wrong hands, a hostile state or nation, a terrorist or a criminal.”
He has also insisted that the Beijing government has been trying to block international investigative work on the origins of the coronavirus. Wray’s comments come after the US Department of Energy concluded that COVID-19 “most likely” originated in a Chinese laboratory, according to a report published by the newspaper The Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal points out that the conclusion of the Department of Energy is the result of reading new data and considers this theory significant because this agency oversees a network of 17 US national laboratories, some of which carry out advanced biological research. However the Journal indicates that the Department of Energy makes this assertion with “low confidence,” whereas when the FBI reached the same conclusion in 2021 it rated its confidence level as “moderate.”
No consensus on the origin of the pandemic
The newspaper notes that four other US departments continue to believe that the coronavirus outbreak was probably the result of natural transmission, while two others are undecided.
Without confirming the newspaper article, the spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirbyhas recognized that within the US Administration there is no consensus on the origin of the pandemic and that Washington wants “facts” so it can prevent future pandemics.
For its part, China believes that it is being subjected to “smears” about the origin of COVID-19. “The tracing of the origins of the covid is a scientific matter and should not be politicized. The parties involved must stop inflating the theory of laboratory leaks and smearing China,” said the Chinese foreign spokeswoman, Mao Ning.
China maintains that the US lacks credibility
Thus, China has defended itself against the accusations and has accused the United States of “not having credibility”, reiterating that the possibility of an accident in a laboratory is “extremely unlikely”. “It is the scientific conclusion reached by the group of Chinese experts and the World Health Organization (WHO) after visiting the Chinese city of Wuhan,” says Ning,
According to the Chinese foreign spokeswoman, the WHO report was “recognized by the international and scientific community.” “The history of US intelligence agencies is littered with fraud and deception. The conclusions they draw have no credibility. The United States returns to this theory of the laboratory, but this does not discredit China, it only further reduces its own credibility,” he says, and asserts that Washington “must respect science and facts, cooperate with the WHO, invite international experts to conduct traceability investigations in their own country and share the results with the international community.
Officials from the Asian country refer to the report that the World Health Organization (WHO) published in March 2021 after visiting Wuhan, where the first cases of covid began to spread in 2019. In that report, the researchers left open four hypotheses about the origin of the pandemic, but they stated that many more studies were needed to reach a definitive conclusion.
A few days earlier, the Chinese government claimed that it was the target of “defamation” after US agencies concluded that the covid “most likely” originated from a leak in a Chinese laboratory.
