The country denies the conclusion of the CIA investigation, which said that the “most likely” is that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory, and accuses the US of “politicizing” the pandemic.
China said this Monday that it was “extremely unlikely” that Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory, following an accusation to that effect made by the North American spy agency CIA.
“The authoritative scientific conclusion reached by the joint group of experts from China and the World Health Organization (WHO), based on field visits to the relevant laboratories in Wuhan, is that it is extremely unlikely that there was a laboratory leak.” , said Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“This fact was widely recognized by the international community and the scientific community”, highlighted the spokesperson, at a press conference.
What do the CIA and the USA say?
This weekend, the CIA considered that the “most likely” thing is that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory, rather than being transmitted by animals.
This position follows the confirmation, on Thursday, of John Ratcliffe as director of the CIA, after the beginning of the second term of US President Donald Trump.
“The CIA believes, with a low degree of confidence and based on all available reports, that a origin related to covid-19 research work is more likely than a natural origin,” an agency spokesperson said on Saturday.
To date, the agency has not reached any conclusions about whether Covid-19 resulted from a laboratory accident or whether it was transmitted by animals.
The US Congress recently concluded a two-year investigation into the Covid-19 pandemic with a 520-page report confirming the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
the virus may have come from a country in China, as other studies have indicated. The report points to the “biological” characteristics of the virus, as well as cases of illness among researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the fall of 2019, as the reasons that justify this theory.
“The United States must stop politicizing and exploiting this issue and stop defaming and blaming other countries,” Mao Ning stressed.
US authorities must “respond as quickly as possible to the legitimate concerns of the international community” and “proactively share data on the first suspected cases with the WHO,” he added.
