by
China said on Monday it was “extremely unlikely”. COVID-19 came from a laboratory, after the The CIA said it believed the virus was more likely to have come from a laboratory than from natural transmission.
“The conclusion that a laboratory leak is extremely unlikely was reached by the joint expert team of China and WHO based on field visits to relevant laboratories in Wuhan,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.
“This is widely recognized by the international community and the scientific community,” she added.
The CIA said on Saturday that the virus was “more likely” to have leaked from a Chinese laboratory than to have been transmitted by animals.
Ng Han Guan / AP
The new assessment came after John Ratcliffe was confirmed last week as CIA director in President Trump’s second administration.
“The CIA assesses with little confidence that an investigative origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on available reporting,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday, adding that “the CIA continues assessing that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
The agency had not previously determined whether COVID was caused by a laboratory accident or transmitted by animals.
Beijing on Monday urged the United States to “stop politicizing and instrumentalizing the issue of origin tracing.”
Mao said Washington should “stop smearing and shifting the blame on other countries (and) respond to the legitimate concerns of the international community as quickly as possible.”
