The FBI assesses with “moderate confidence” that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.
A Chinese official on Wednesday questioned the U.S. intelligence community’s suitability to make scientific judgements, after FBI chief Christopher Wray said COVID-19 likely started as a result of a laboratory accident.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” said Wray, who has been FBI director since 2017.
His comments about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, were made to Fox News on Tuesday. Beijing insists the international community should accept the March 2021 findings of a joint WHO-China report, which said a lab incident was “extremely unlikely.”
Additional discussions about the topic amount to “political manipulation” aimed at smearing China, its officials say, despite the WHO’s own insistence that origin-tracing work in China should continue.
“Here, you’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans,” Wray said.
“The Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing.
