Covid-19 probably leaked from a virus lab in Wuhan, China, according to the director of the FBI. Christopher Wray says the bureau believes the virus "most likely" originated in a "Chinese government-controlled lab".
A US intelligence government report from the US Department of Energy provided to White House last week concluded Covid-19 most likely leaked from a lab. The agency believes an accidental exposure within the city is the most likely cause.
In the first public confirmation of the FBI's classified judgement, Mr Wray told Fox News: "The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident." He said China "has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate" efforts to identify the source of the global pandemic.
"And that's unfortunate for everybody," Mr Wray added. On Monday, China dismissed the DofE report and alluded to a 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) investigation that called the lab leak theory "extremely unlikely".
"Certain parties should stop rehashing the 'lab leak' narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicising origins-tracing," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) research facility is less than 10 miles from an animal slaughter market where the first series of human cases were clustered.
Opinion on how Covid-19 began remains divided across different arms of the US government, with four other agencies and a national intelligence panel believing it resulted from natural transmission. Two other agencies are still undecided.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan refused to confirm or deny the reports during an appearance at the weekend on CNN, and instead chose to emphasise President Joe Biden's push to discover the origin of the virus.
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He said: “President Biden specifically requested that the national labs, which are part of the Energy Department, be brought into this assessment because he wants to put every tool at use to be able to figure out what happened here,”
On Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that US President Joe Biden supports "a whole-of-government effort" to discover how Covid began. But he added that the US still lacks a clear consensus as to what happened.
"We're just not there yet," he said. "If we have something that is ready to be briefed to the American people and the Congress, we will do that."
