“It loses credibility.” Beijing rejects Washington's accusations that Corona leaked from a Chinese laboratory

Beijing considered that Washington was damaging its credibility after the director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation said that his agency believed that the Covid outbreak was "most likely" caused by an accident in a laboratory in Wuhan. The US Department of Energy believes that the Corona virus leaked from a laboratory in China.

Beijing considered, on Wednesday, that Washington was damaging its credibility after the director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that his agency believes that the Covid outbreak “likely” resulted from an accident in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News on Tuesday that his office assesses that the spread of the virus was "most likely the result of a possible laboratory accident in Wuhan."

Chinese officials denied the remarks, describing them as a smear campaign against Beijing.

"The United States once again raises the theory of laboratory leakage, which will not tarnish China's reputation but discredit itself," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular press conference Wednesday.

Ray's comments came after the "Wall Street Journal" quoted what it called secret intelligence reports that the US Department of Energy suggested that Corona had leaked from a Chinese laboratory, but ruled out that this was related to a biological weapon, in a new development that sheds light on how different parts of the intelligence community reached judgments. Divergent about the origin of the epidemic.

In this, the Department of Energy joins what the FBI had previously announced that the virus likely spread through an accident in a Chinese laboratory. Four other intelligence agencies, in addition to the CIA, denied these suspicions, saying that the transmission of Covid-19 from animals to humans occurred naturally.

The FBI had previously suggested that the leakage from a Chinese laboratory be a "very likely cause" of the spread of the new Corona in 2019. The office relied on the opinions of its cadre of microbiologists and immunologists, as well as the results of the research of the American "National Center for Biocriminal Analysis".

US officials declined to give additional details about the intelligence that prompted the US Department of Energy to change its position. They contented themselves with saying, according to the newspaper, that each of the Ministry of Energy and the FBI relied in reaching these conclusions to different sources of information.

In his interview on Tuesday, Ray accused the Chinese government of trying to obstruct US efforts to investigate the origins of the epidemic.

The FBI director said: "The Chinese government is doing everything it can to try to thwart and disrupt the work of our US government and our close foreign partners."

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said, "The United States should respect science and facts, cooperate with the World Health Organization as soon as possible, invite international experts to conduct tracking research in its country, and share research results with the international community."