Origins of COVID-19 pandemic 'most likely a potential lab incident' in China: FBI Director

By Darren Lyn

HOUSTON, US (AA) - The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced Tuesday that the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic likely came from a laboratory in 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," said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement posted on Twitter.

In an interview with Fox News, Wray discussed the FBI's work on determining ground zero for the pandemic but said many details about the investigation of the origination of COVID-19 remain classified.

Wray said he believes that Beijing has been working to undermine the investigation from the US and other members of the international community.

"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 we're doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing," he continued. "And that’s unfortunate for everybody."

The FBI's acknowledgement of China's involvement in starting the pandemic comes just days after the revelation that the US Department of Energy (DOE) recently released a report that determined with “low confidence” that a lab leak was responsible for COVID-19.

It also changes the FBI's previous stance which concluded with "moderate confidence" that a lab leak was the cause of the coronavirus spreading to the public, according to The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ also reported that people who read the DOE’s report said the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and one other agency were unsure about the source of the pandemic, while the report said the National Intelligence Council and four other agencies believed COVID-19 came by a natural occurrence from an infected animal.

The White House responded to the WSJ report that the intelligence community has not received a “definitive answer” on the pandemic’s origins.

“Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other," said National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. "A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure."

The House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Response is investigating the source of the pandemic during the current session of Congress.

Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee concluded that the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab in a report released last year.