Coronavirus leaked from China lab: FBI chief

Covid's origin has been the subject of vigorous debate among academics, intelligence experts and lawmakers, according to a report in WSJ.

Days after the US Department of Energy (USDE) said in a report that the coronavirus was most likely leaked from a bio-laboratory of Wuhan in China, the country's premier investigating agency Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed it on Wednesday.

"FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the Bureau has assessed that the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from a lab incident in Wuhan, China," tweeted the FBI.

"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan... I will just make the observation that the Chinese government... has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we're doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing," news agency ANI quoted the FBI chief as saying.

USDE has now joined the FBI in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory, reported Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The department's conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of US national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.

The department's insights come from its network of national laboratories, some of which conduct biological research, rather than more traditional forms of intelligence like spy networks or communication intercepts.

The novel coronavirus first circulated in Wuhan city, not later than November 2019, according to the US 2021 intelligence report. The pandemic's origin has been the subject of vigorous debate among academics, intelligence experts and lawmakers, according to a report in WSJ.

From its origin there, the SARS-CoV-2 virus rapidly spread to other locations outside Wuhan in late 2019 and then to the rest of the world, killing nearly 70 lakh people. A World Health Organisation (WHO) team of experts who visited Wuhan in 2021 amid the raging controversy over the lab leak theory, which China vehemently denied, stated in its report that the leak from the Wuhan bio-lab was the "least likely hypothesis".

But WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who received the report, said the Wuhan lab leak allegation required further probe. "As far as the WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table," PTI quoted Ghebreyesus as saying.

Even after around 3 years since Covid-19 was first detected in Wuhan, the question of how and from where the virus first emerged remains a mystery. It is suspected that the coronavirus may have escaped, accidentally or otherwise, from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where the virus was first recorded. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has been studying coronaviruses in bats for over a decade.

The USDE assessment further adds to the divide in the US government over whether the Covid-19 pandemic began in China in 2019 as the result of a lab leak or whether it emerged naturally. The various intelligence agencies have been split on the matter for years.

In 2021, the intelligence community declassified a report that showed four agencies in the intelligence community had assessed with low confidence that the virus likely jumped from animals to humans naturally in the wild, while one assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident, the CNN report said. A USDE spokesperson in a statement to CNN said, "The Department of Energy continues to support the thorough, careful and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed."

USDE's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence is one of the 18 government agencies that make up the intelligence community, which is under the umbrella of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which declined to comment on the issue.

The controversial lab leak theory first emerged early on in the pandemic and was promoted by then US President Donald Trump. China has rejected the claim that the virus may have escaped from a laboratory, calling it a 'smear' and suggesting the coronavirus may have entered the country
in food shipments from another country. Given the massive human toll of the pandemic, most scientists think understanding how and where the virus originated is crucial to prevent it from happening again.

However, China has again rejected new US reports saying the origin-tracing of the pandemic "is about science and should not be politicised." Its Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the international experts have considered the theory that the pandemic might have leaked from a Chinese laboratory as "extremely unlikely".

With inputs from agencies