China has strongly rejected claims that Covid-19 originated from a laboratory, following a statement by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) suggesting the virus was “more likely” to have leaked from a Chinese lab rather than being transmitted from animals.

On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning dismissed the idea, stating that a joint expert team from China and the World Health Organization (WHO) had concluded that a lab leak was "extremely unlikely." This conclusion, she said, was based on field visits to relevant labs in Wuhan, where the virus was first detected. Mao emphasized that this finding had been widely accepted by the international and scientific communities.

The CIA’s statement, released on Saturday, stated that it assessed with "low confidence" that the virus’s origin was more likely linked to research activities in a lab than to natural transmission. The new evaluation came after John Ratcliffe’s confirmation as CIA director under the second administration of former President Donald Trump.

A CIA spokesperson clarified that the agency had previously refrained from making any determinations about whether the virus emerged from a laboratory accident or animal spillover.

In response, China urged the United States to “stop politicizing and instrumentalizing the issue of origin-tracing.” Mao called on Washington to cease “smearing” other nations and to address the legitimate concerns of the international community regarding the pandemic’s origins.

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