China's Foreign Ministry has rejected allegations that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation or release of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which caused the global COVID-19 pandemic, reports "Reuters"
During a regular briefing, a ministry spokesman said that the lab had never conducted gain-of-function research - a technique used to study potential mutations of viruses and their contagiousness.
Beijing's official position comes amid long-standing international speculation about the origin of the virus, which was first discovered in the city of Wuhan in late 2019. Doubts about the possibility of a laboratory accident arose due to the proximity of the Institute of Virology to the first recorded cases, as well as the lack of transparency on the part of the Chinese authorities in the early months of the pandemic.
In recent years, various investigations by the World Health Organization (WHO), US intelligence agencies and independent scientific teams have failed to provide a definitive answer to the question of whether the virus is of natural origin or arose as a result of a laboratory accident. Some reports by US intelligence agencies indicate that the "most likely hypothesis" is the transmission of the virus from an animal to a person, but some services in the US remain open to the version of a laboratory accident.
In 2023, the US Department of Energy and FBI Director Christopher Wray announced that there was "moderate confidence" that the pandemic was caused by a leak from a laboratory, but without providing concrete evidence. China strongly rejects these accusations and criticizes the US for "politicizing science".