WASHINGTON, 01 MAR – The head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, said in an interview with Fox News that the Bureau believes that Covid-19 “most likely” originated in a “laboratory controlled by the Chinese government”. “The FBI has long assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential laboratory accident,” he explained. It is the first public confirmation of the Bureau’s classified assessment of how the virus appeared. China has denied a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, calling the allegation defamatory. In his interview, Wray accused Beijing of having “done its best to try to thwart and obfuscate” efforts to identify the source of the global pandemic. Some studies suggest the virus made the jump from animals to humans in Wuhan, perhaps at the city’s fish and wildlife market. The market is a 40-minute drive from a world-leading virus laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been conducting research on coronaviruses. In recent days, the US Department of Energy had also assessed with “lack of confidence” that Covid had come out of a laboratory. But other American agencies have drawn different conclusions, so much so that National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stressed that there is no unanimous consensus in the administration on the origins of Covid-19. (HANDLE).
(HANDLE)