Beijing vigorously challenged on Monday the hypothesis now favored by the US Department of Energy that COVID-19 came from a laboratory accident in China, considering itself “dirty” by these new accusations.
“It is necessary to stop agitating this theory of a laboratory leak, to stop smearing China and to stop politicizing the search for the origins of the virus”, affirmed the spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs , Mao Ning, during a regular press briefing.
Beijing was reacting to the recent change in analysis within the US Department of Energy which would now retain – “with a low level of confidence” – the track of a laboratory leak in China, on the strength of a new report from ‘an intelligence agency revealed on Sunday by the wall street journal and the New York Times.
“Experts from China and the WHO, based on field visits to laboratories in Wuhan and in-depth exchanges with researchers, have established the authoritative conclusion that the option of a leak from a lab is highly unlikely,” Ning insisted.
Three years after the start of the pandemic, the origin of the virus which has killed nearly 7 million people worldwide and shaken the march of the globe remains however still undetermined.
In February 2021, experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Chinese scientists judged the trail of an accident at the Chinese virology institute in Wuhan “highly improbable” and favored the hypothesis of a natural origin of the virus and transmission to humans by an “intermediate” animal.
Since then, the hypothesis of laboratory manipulation coupled with an accidental leak has however resurfaced, particularly in the United States where this track is, according to the wall street journalnotably retained by the FBI.
A sign that the debate is still open in the United States, four American intelligence agencies believe that COVID is of natural origin and two remain undecided, according to the review of the wall street journal.
“As of now, no definitive response from the intelligence community has emerged on the matter,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on CNN on Sunday.
In mid-February, WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus personally pledged to do everything to obtain “an answer” on the origins of COVID-19, strongly denying reports that the organization had given up on finalizing its investigation on the subject.