China has denounced US efforts to further investigate whether Covid-19 came from a Chinese lab.
US President Joe Biden has called on intelligence officials to "redouble" their work to find out how the virus was first transmitted to humans.
China's foreign ministry accused the US of "political manipulation and blame shifting".
It has rejected any link between Covid-19 and a virus research lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Covid-19 was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019. Since then, more than 168 million cases have been confirmed worldwide and about 3.5 million deaths reported.
Authorities linked early Covid cases to a seafood market in Wuhan, leading scientists to theorise that the virus had first passed to humans from animals....BBC
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There is insufficient evidence to properly assess the origins of the global coronavirus pandemic, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said on Thursday.
ReplyDelete"The U.S. Intelligence Community does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially but has coalesced around two likely scenarios: either it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or it was a laboratory accident," spokeswoman Amanda Schoch said in a statement.
"While two elements of the IC lean toward the former scenario and one leans more toward thae latter -- each with low or moderate confidence -- the majority of elements within the IC do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other," she added, using an acronym for the intelligence community.