Wuhan lab leak likely caused Covid pandemic: FBI director

WASHINGTON: FBI Director Christopher Wray said late on Tuesday the agency has assessed that a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News. His comments follow a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday that the US Energy Department has assessed with low confidence the pandemic resulted from an unintended lab leak in China.

Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that the pandemic was likely the result of natural transmission, and two are undecided, the Journal reported. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Monday the US government has not reached a definitive conclusion and consensus on the pandemic’s origins.

Wray said he couldn’t share many details of the agency’s assessment because they were classified. He accused the Chinese government of “doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate” efforts by the United States and others to learn more about the pandemic’s origins.

Meanwhile, Beijing accused Washington on Wednesday of harming its own credibility after a top US intelligence official said his agency believed the pandemic “most likely” caused by a laboratory incident in Wuhan, China.

“The United States once again stirs up the laboratory leak theory, which will not discredit China, which will further lower its own credibility,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular briefing on Wednesday.

Wray´s comments come after a report earlier this week said the US Department of Energy had determined that a leak from a Chinese lab was the most likely cause of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The department´s findings are significant because it works with a network of national laboratories, including some that do advanced biological research. But other agencies within the US intelligence community believe the virus emerged naturally in the world.

In Tuesday´s interview, Wray also accused the Chinese government of trying to stall US efforts to investigate the causes of the pandemic. “The Chinese government... has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we´re doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing,” Wray said.

“And that´s unfortunate for everybody.” At Wednesday´s press briefing, Mao reiterated a longstanding and unsubstantiated Chinese claim that the virus could have escaped from the US military research lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

“The US should respect science and facts, cooperate with the World Health Organisation as soon as possible, invite international experts to conduct traceability research in its country, and share research results with the international community,” she said. The scientific community sees it as crucial to determine the origins of the pandemic in order to better fight or even prevent the next one.