FBI Director Christopher Wray says his agency has assessed that the likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic was a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Wray’s comments follow a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday that the US Department of Energy had assessed with low confidence that the pandemic was the result of an unintended leak from a laboratory in China.
“The FBI has been estimating for some time that the origin of the pandemic is most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray told. Four other U.S. agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, believe the pandemic was likely the result of natural transmission, and two are undecided, the Journal reported.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby also said on Monday that the US government has not reached a definitive conclusion and consensus on the origin of the pandemic.
Wray also told Fox News that China has thwarted efforts to identify the origin of the virus. But the investigation is still ongoing, he said, adding that he was unable to share “a lot of details that are classified” at this time.
“I’m just going to note that the Chinese government … has been doing everything they can to try to thwart and obscure the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing,” he said. he said.
The FBI later tweeted the director’s comments
China’s foreign ministry, when asked to comment on the Wall Street Journal report, referred to a joint report from the World Health Organization and China that pointed to a natural origin of the pandemic rather than a lab leak.
“In terms of tracing the origin of SARS-CoV-2, China has been open and transparent and has shared information and data about COVID-19 with the international community in a timely manner,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said on Tuesday.
“China is the only country that has more than once invited WHO expert groups to come to the country to conduct a joint study of origins. China has shared more data and research findings on the study of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 than any other country,” she said.
Mao also said that the US should look at its own biological laboratories scattered around the world. “It is the US that should be responding to the world’s questions and concerns about Fort Detrick and its military and biological laboratories around the world, By politicizing this matter, the US will not succeed in discrediting China. Instead, it will only damage the US’s own credibility” she says.
The WHO’s global COVID-19 trackers reported that there were more than 757 million viral infections and 6.85 million related deaths as of February 21.
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