FBI believes the COVID-19 pandemic was "most likely" caused by an incident in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday.
"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan," Wray said in an interview with Fox News.
The comments come after a report earlier this week said the U.S. Department of Energy had determined that a leak from a Chinese lab was the most likely cause of the COVID-19 outbreak.
However, other agencies within the American intelligence community believe the virus emerged naturally in the world.
In the interview, Wray also accused the Chinese government of trying to stall U.S. efforts to investigate the causes of the pandemic.
"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 U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing," Wray said. "And that's unfortunate for everybody."
China denounced Wray's comments on Wednesday, saying it was firmly opposed to any form of "political manipulation" of the facts.
"Based on the poor track record of fraud and deception of the U.S. intelligence community, the conclusions they draw have no credibility whatsoever," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing.
"... We urge the U.S. side to respect science and facts."
The scientific community sees it as crucial to determine the origins of the pandemic in order to better fight or even prevent the next one.
