According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, an incident in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, “most likely” created the COVID-19 epidemic.
Wray stated, “The FBI has long believed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a probable lab event in Wuhan.
The comments come after a report earlier this week said the US Department of Energy had determined that a leak from a Chinese lab was the most likely cause of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Yet, other organizations in the American intelligence community think the virus appeared in the world by accident.
In the interview, Wray also accused that China was attempting to obstruct US efforts to look into the origins of the virus.
“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,” Wray said. “And that’s unfortunate for everybody.”
Officials in China have strongly refuted the claim, calling it a smear campaign against Beijing.
In order to better combat or possibly avoid the next pandemic, the scientific community believes that understanding the causes of the current outbreak is essential.
