FBI coronavirus 'lab leak' claims hurt US credibility: China

The spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry, Mao Ning, has condemned Christopher Wray's allegations about the origin of the coronavirus and asserted that they only damage US credibility.

Speaking on Fox News on Tuesday, Wray said that the bureau believes COVID-19 "most likely" originated in a "Chinese government-controlled lab". According to the BBC, it is the first public confirmation of the FBI's classified judgement of how the pandemic virus emerged.

Wray's statement came in response to a report published earlier this week that stated the US Department of Energy had concluded that the COVID-19 outbreak was most likely caused by a leak from a Chinese laboratory.

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in its first comments on the investigation into the Covid-19 origins, acknowledged that the virus was likely the result of a lab accident in Wuhan, China. FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News that “the FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”

In the interview, Wray said that the FBI has a team of experts working specifically on the risk of biological threats that fall into the “wrong hands". Wray added that most of the data is classified, so not much can be said about it. He did admit that it has been difficult to work with the Chinese government on investigating the pandemic’s origin.

“You’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans,” Wray said of the coronavirus, “and that’s precisely what that capability was designed for.”

“I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here,” the bureau director said. “The work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing. And that’s unfortunate for everybody.”

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The report comes just a few days after the US energy department in a classified and updated document claimed that the COVID-19 virus was the result of a lab leak. However, the department deemed its level of confidence in its assessment as “low". China later dismissed the report saying that the "origins-tracing of SARS-CoV-2 is about science and should not be politicised."

There has been a divide in the US government over the origins of Covid-19. A 2021 report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed that the National Intelligence Council, along with four other unidentified agencies, in a low-confidence assessment believe that the initial Covid-19 infection “was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus.”

(With inputs from agencies)

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