FBI Director Christopher Wray has said that the bureau believes that Covid-19 “likely” originated in a lab controlled by the Chinese government.
“The FBI has assumed for a long time now that the origin of the pandemic was most likely a lab event,” he told JEE News.
This is the first public confirmation of the FBI’s classified decision on how the pandemic virus emerged.
Many scientists have dismissed the lab leak theory as lacking evidence.
And other US government agencies have drawn different conclusions about the FBI.
Some of them have said – but with a low level of conviction – that the virus did not originate in a lab but instead jumped from animals to humans.
The White House has said there is no consensus within the US government on the origin.
A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) investigation in 2021 called the lab leak theory “highly unlikely”.
However, the WHO investigation was heavily criticized and its director-general subsequently called for a new inquiry, saying: “All hypotheses are open and further study is needed.”
Mr Ray’s comments came a day after the US ambassador to China called on the country to be “more honest” about the origins of Covid.
In his interview on Tuesday, Mr Ray said China was doing its best to “frustrate and obfuscate” efforts to identify the source of the global pandemic.
“And that’s unfortunate for everybody,” he said.
In response, Beijing accused Washington of “political manipulation”.
“There is no credibility to talk about the conclusions they reached,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said.
Some studies suggest the virus jumped from animals to humans in Wuhan, China, possibly at the city’s seafood and wildlife markets.
The market is close to the world’s leading virus laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducted research on the coronavirus.
