China hits out at FBI’s COVID lab-leak theory

China on Wednesday strongly pushed back against the FBI’s claim that the COVID-19 pandemic may have originated from a virus that leaked from a Chinese laboratory and urged the US to “respect science and facts.”

“By rehashing the lab-leak theory, the US will not succeed in discrediting China, and instead, it will only hurt its own credibility,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning in responding to remarks made by FBI Director Christopher Wray this week.

Mao further argued that the involvement of the intelligence bureau in this matter was evidence enough of “politicization of origin tracing.”

“We urge the US to respect science and facts … stop turning origin tracing into something about politics and intelligence, and stop disrupting social solidarity and origins cooperation,” she added.

In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier Tuesday, Wray said: “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in (central China’s) Wuhan.”

His comments echoed a Department of Energy report that determined with “low confidence” that the virus that causes COVID-19 came from a Chinese laboratory.

The head of the FBI also said that US officials were still trying to get to the bottom of what triggered the pandemic and accused China of trying to undermine the investigation.

“The Chinese government, seems to me, 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 and that’s unfortunate for everybody,” Wray said.

It has been previously reported that the Chinese government was strictly controlling research into the origin of the pandemic that has killed more than 6.8 million people worldwide, clamping down on some work and promoting fringe theories that it could have come from abroad.

A World Health Organization expert group also claimed last year that “key pieces of data” to explain how the pandemic originated were still missing.

Mao earlier this week also insisted that China has been “open and transparent” in the search for the virus’ origins and has “shared the most data and research results on virus tracing and made important contributions to global virus tracing research.”

The Department of Energy report has not been made public and, according to officials in Washington, does not express a consensus shared by all US agencies.

Some scientists are open to the lab-leak theory, but many believe the virus came from animals, mutated, and jumped to people, as has happened with other viruses in the past.

Former White House chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci, who oversaw the US response to the pandemic before retiring last year, warned Monday that “we may never know” the source of the outbreak and urged people to keep an “open mind to all possibilities.”

With Post wires