Monday, January 27, 2025 - China said Monday, January 27, it was “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 came from a laboratory after the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said it believed the virus had more likely come from a lab rather than natural transmission.
“The conclusion that a laboratory leak is extremely unlikely
was reached by the China-WHO joint expert team based on field visits to
relevant laboratories in Wuhan,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.
“This has been widely recognized by the international
community and the scientific community,” she added.
The CIA said Saturday that the virus was “more likely”
leaked from a Chinese lab than transmitted by animals.
The new assessment came after John Ratcliffe was confirmed
last week as the CIA director under the second White House administration of
Donald Trump.
“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related
origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on
the available body of reporting,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement
Saturday.
The agency had not previously made any determination on
whether COVID had been unleashed by a laboratory mishap or spilt over from
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 to other countries (and) should respond to the legitimate concerns of the
international community as soon as possible”.
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