China on Monday dismissed the possibility that the virus that caused COVID-19 leaked from a lab, after the CIA said it now favors the so-called lab leak theory over natural transmission.
“It is extremely unlikely the pandemic was caused by a lab leak,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters. “This has been widely recognized by the international community, including the scientific community,” she said.
Mao added that the conclusion was reached by the joint China-WHO expert team from field visits.
Mao did not say where the virus originated, only that any judgment should be made by scientists
The CIA on Saturday said it believes the virus came from a Chinese lab. The new assessment, though it was made with low confidence, dumped new fuel on the debate over the origins of COVID-19.
“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting. CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,” an agency spokesperson told The Hill.
“We have low confidence in this judgement and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA’s assessment.”
The swift release of the conclusion came just days after new CIA Director John Ratcliffe was sworn in.
It also comes after the Biden administration ordered further review of the origins of COVID-19, contributing to the divide in the U.S. government over whether the virus was introduced naturally or from a lab accident.
Federal agencies, including the Intelligence Community, have not come to a definitive conclusion.
In 2023, a classified report from the Department of Energy reportedly concluded with low confidence the virus originated from a lab. That same year, the FBI also said a lab leak was more plausible than natural exposure.
In 2021, the intelligence community indicated that they were split over the origins of the disease. An unclassified summary report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said both the lab leak theory and naturally occurring theory were plausible.
Four agencies had assessed with low confidence that the virus jumped from animals to humans in the wild, while one agency assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident.
The decision to release the latest CIA assessment was made by Ratcliffe, who was sworn in Thursday.
Intelligence agencies typically share their conclusions with a low, moderate or high degree of confidence. It’s unusual for intelligence agencies to publicize assessments with a low degree of confidence.
Ratcliffe has long favored the lab leak idea, and in the past has questioned whether the CIA under President Biden had downplayed the theory for political reasons.
In an interview with Breitbart News that was his first after being sworn in, Ratcliffe indicated he did not want the CIA to be “sitting on the sidelines” on the debate about the origins of COVID-19.
“One of the things that I’ve talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts, and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID. That’s a day-one thing for me,” Ratcliffe told the right-leaning outlet.
But in a later interview with Fox News, he said the decision to release a report was not political. Instead, it was an effort to renew trust and promote transparency in intelligence agencies.
“I had the opportunity on my first day to make public an assessment that actually took place in the Biden administration, so it can’t be accused of being political, and the CIA has assessed that the most likely cause of this pandemic that has wrought so much devastation around the world was because of a lab-related incident in Wuhan, so we’ll continue to investigate that moving forward,” he told “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo.
“I think it was important for the American people to see an institution like the CIA get off the sidelines and be truthful about what our intelligence shows and, at the same time, protect us from adversaries like China if they caused or contributed to this,” he added.
Ratcliffe didn’t say there was any new evidence that contributed to the CIA analysis, and it’s unclear what the latest assessment will mean for U.S.-China relations. Some health experts continue to believe the origin doesn’t matter, and China’s lack of transparency makes it almost impossible to find out for sure.
Republicans in Congress have long said the virus escaped from a lab.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised the CIA’s new assessment.
“I’ve said from the beginning that Covid likely originated in the Wuhan labs,” Cotton said in a post on the social platform X. “I’m pleased the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab-leak theory is the most plausible explanation of Covid’s origins and I commend Director Ratcliffe for fulfilling his promise to release this conclusion. Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky)., the new chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has pinned the blame on former top federal infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci for participating in what he says has been a massive cover-up. Even after Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci, Paul has insisted he will continue to investigate.
A 520-page report released in December from the House select subcommittee on the pandemic concluded the virus “most likely” escaped from a Wuhan lab. It also accused Fauci of pushing a false narrative about the virus’s origins.
