FBI Assesses Origins of COVID-19 ‘Most Likely’ From Potential Leak in Wuhan Lab – Director
In this file photo taken on 18 March, 2022 employees spray disinfectant and wipe surfaces as part of preventative measures against the Covid-19 coronavirus at the Pyongyang Children’s Department Store in Pyongyan
InternationalIndiaAfricaWASHINGTON (Sputnik) – FBI Director Christopher Wray said in an interview that the novel coronavirus most likely originated from a potential mishap at a lab in Wuhan, China. “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray said in a Fox News interview that aired on Tuesday. The White House has recently said the US intelligence community has not reached a consensus on the origins of the novel coronavirus, but US president has directed the US intelligence community to continue to make any additional insights available to Congress. On Sunday, US media reported that the US Department of Energy, which runs a network of national bioresearch laboratories, has joined the FBI in claiming that the COVID-19 pandemic emerged from a test tube in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. 
AnalysisWuhan Lab ‘Leak’ Yarn Returns: How US Reporter Pours Gasoline Into Washington’s War Machine27 February, 15:35 GMTThe 2021 US intelligence report concluded that the virus first circulated in Wuhan no later than November 2019. The scientific and political community in the United States has been arguing since then about whether it escaped from a lab or emerged naturally and jumped from an infected animal to a human. China has repeatedly lashed back against suggestions that its biological research program could have been the origin of the outbreak, which has claimed millions of lives globally since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in March 2020.