China said today that the US Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) hypothesis that a virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory caused the Covid-19 pandemic is "extremely implausible".
"The authoritative scientific conclusion reached by the joint expert group of China and the World Health Organization (WHO), based on field visits to relevant laboratories in Wuhan, is that it is extremely unlikely that there was a leak from the laboratory," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.
The CIA has released an assessment that it is more likely that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory than that it came from animals.
A CIA spokesman said that "a research-related origin of the pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on available reports."
The decision to release the assessment is one of the first made by the new CIA director, John Ratcliffe, who was appointed by the new US President Donald Trump.
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