The director of the FBI called the most likely laboratory origin of COVID-19

The coronavirus pandemic most likely occurred after a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, FBI Director Christopher Wray said. transmits Reuters.

“The FBI has long concluded that the source of the pandemic is most likely a potential laboratory incident in Wuhan,” he said.

Earlier on February 26, The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Energy was also bows down to the version of the laboratory origin of the pandemic, but with a “low degree of certainty”.

Reuters points out that four other US agencies, including the National Intelligence Commission, still believe the pandemic was most likely the result of natural transmission. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on February 28 that the US government had not reached a final consensus on the issue.

At the same time, the head of Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, today at a meeting of the State Duma Committee on Health, said that the institutions in Wuhan had not studied “anything forbidden”.

“It is absolutely impossible to confirm that they lost it, it flowed out of there. The security system there is of high quality, – leads her words to RIA Novosti.

In March 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a report on the emergence of COVID-19, where it presented four versions of the emergence of the virus. The authors consider the most likely version of the transmission of coronavirus to humans from bats through an intermediary animal. At the same time, the WHO called the version of a virus leak from a laboratory in Wuhan “extremely unlikely.”

In July 2021, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the organization was preparing for the second stage of the investigation into the emergence of the coronavirus and expected transparency from the Chinese authorities. He said it was too early to rule out that the coronavirus spread after a leak from a laboratory in China, and called on China to cooperate openly. He also said that WHO plans to check the laboratories in Wuhan, near which the first cases of COVID-19 infection were registered.

In September 2022, the final report of the commission on COVID-19 was published in the British medical journal Lancet. According to him, scientists still admit the possibility of a laboratory origin of the coronavirus and its subsequent leakage.