New Delhi: A new report has claimed that the Covid-19 virus, which has so far killed over 68 lakh people worldwide, may have emerged from a Chinese laboratory leak. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday (February 26, 2023) that the US Department of Energy had concluded COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from a bio lab in Wuhanan assessment Beijing has denied.
Citing people who have read the intelligence report, the Journal said the department based its decision with “low confidence” in a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.
The Journal reported that four other US agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that Covid-19 was the result of natural transmission, while two remain undecided.
China rejects lab-leak theory on COVID-19 origin
Responding to a Wall Street Journal report, China on Monday dismissed suggestions that the COVID-19 virus may have leaked from a biolab in Wuhan, saying the origin-tracing of the pandemic is “about science”. and it should not be politicised.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said international experts consider the theory that the pandemic may have leaked from a Chinese laboratory as “extremely likely”.
He said this is a science-based, official conclusion reached by experts from the WHO-China joint mission following a field visit to the laboratory in Wuhan and intensive communication with researchers.
The question of how the coronavirus first emerged remains a mystery.
More than three years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, the question of how 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 the coronavirus in bats for over a decade.
Earlier in 2021 a World Health Organization (WHO) team of experts visited Wuhan amid growing controversy over the lab-leak theory and said in its report that the leak from the Wuhan Bio Lab was “the least likely hypothesis”.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, however, said the Wuhan lab leak allegation needed further investigation and that “all hypotheses are on the table”.
Globally, according to WHO, there have been 75,72,64,511 confirmed cases of Covid-19, including 68,50,594 deaths.