China says it's "extremely unlikely" that COVID-19​ came from a lab, after the CIA said it believed​, though with low confidence, that it did, rather than from natural transmission.

China on Monday dismissed the possibility that the virus that caused COVID-19 leaked from a lab, after the CIA said it now favors the so-called lab leak theory over natural transmission. “It is extremely unlikely the pandemic was caused by a lab leak,

The problem for the lab-leak position is that the U.S. has never had access to the Wuhan lab and has thus been unable to reach a definitive answer for more than five years. Now that the CIA has at last come to a conclusion, not all scientists are sold on what it has reported, seeing the results as thinly scientifically sourced.

The Central Intelligence Agency with a "low confidence" has changed its stance and concluded that it's likely the COVI-19 virus was leaked from a Chinese lab before it became a global pandemic five years ago.

The news comes after the CIA announced over the weekend that COVID-19 most likely originated from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2020.

It was unclear the extent to which the agency has collected new intelligence on COVID-19's origins and whether that new evidence was used to formulate the latest assessment.

China urged the US to “stop politicising and instrumentalising the issue of origin-tracing”. Read more at straitstimes.com.

The Central Intelligence Agency previously said that two explanations were plausible, a lab leak or a natural source for the virus. Yet under new agency director John Ratcliffe, the CIA has changed its view, which is now in line with that of the Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The CIA announced on Saturday that it now considers a lab leak a more likely origin for the COVID-19 pandemic than a natural transmission, although the agency maintains "low confidence" in this assessment.

The CIA says both a natural origin and a lab leak "remain plausible" as potential sources of covid-19, following a review of the pandemic's origins.

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