China is hitting back at the FBI’s claim that the Wuhan lab leak likely caused the COVID pandemic

China on Wednesday denounced FBI Director Christopher Wray’s comments about his agency’s assessment that a leak from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan likely caused the COVID pandemic, a claim China said had “zero credibility”.

“The FBI has long determined that the origin of the pandemic is most likely a possible lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News.

“Based on the poor record of fraud and deceit of the US intelligence community, the conclusions they reach are not credible at all,” Mao Ning, spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, told reporters in Beijing.

“…We urge the US to respect science and facts.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray first noted that the FBI concluded that COVID originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China

Despite the FBI’s conclusion, Wray added that Beijing has continually tried to undermine the work of the US government.

“I will just make the comment that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has done its best to try to thwart and obscure the work here, the work that we are doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing. . do, and that’s a shame for everyone,” he told Fox.

Wray said the work was being carried out by top FBI and US government experts who specialize in monitoring potential outbreaks.

“The FBI has people, agents, professionals, analysts, virologists, microbiologists, etc. who specifically focus on the dangers of biological threats, including things like new viruses like COVID, and the concern that some bad guys might fall into the wrong hands, one or another hostile nation-state, a terrorist, a criminal, the threats that could pose,” Wray said.

“So here you’re talking about a leak in a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans, which is exactly what that capability was designed for.”

Wray said he couldn’t share many details of the agency’s assessment because they were classified.

In addition to the FBI, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the US energy department had determined with little confidence that the pandemic resulted from an accidental lab leak in China.

Four other agencies – and a national intelligence panel – still believe the pandemic was likely due to natural transmission, and two have yet to make a decision.

With the mixed conclusions from US agencies, the White House was not required to provide a definitive answer on Monday about the origins of the pandemic.

“There is currently no consensus in the US government as to exactly how it started. There’s just no consensus within the intelligence community,” said Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for national security.

Kirby pointed to that lack of agreement, even as the White House defended infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci against conspiracy theories and declined to say how the US would act against China if the theory that its labs were responsible holds up.

The virus was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019 before spreading around the world, killing nearly 7 million people.

Wray said the virus was likely the result of a lab leak and that the Chinese government has tried to undermine his agency’s work.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning denounced what she called “politicization” of theories about the origins of COVID-19, following an analysis by the Energy Department that pointed to the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan lab

Virologist Shi Zheng-li – nicknamed the ‘Bat Lady’ – is pictured in the lab. She hunted dozens of deadly COVID-like viruses in bat caves and studied them at the WIV