The German foreign intelligence service has gathered credible evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic originated as a result of a leak of the virus from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, DPA reported, citing reports in three German-language newspapers.
In recent months, the service and the German chancellery have asked scientists to examine the evidence, although the results of this assessment were not immediately available, according to reports in three newspapers today - "Neue Zürcher Zeitung", "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and "Zeit".
The so-called "lab leak" theory has long been a well-known but controversial explanation for the deadly global pandemic. It suggests that the Sars-CoV-2 virus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducted research on coronaviruses, and began to spread after a suspected accident or malfunction in the laboratory.
The other main theory about the origin of the pandemic is that the virus has a purely natural origin, just like the severe acute respiratory virus epidemic at the beginning of the 21st century.
According to the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung", not all researchers involved in the study requested by German foreign intelligence were equally convinced that the virus came from the laboratory.
Some of the researchers believe that the probability of an artificially created pandemic by the institute is constantly increasing, but they do not yet want to commit to such a claim.
A German government spokeswoman told journalists in Berlin that the publications had been taken into account. The spokeswoman, however, said she could not comment on intelligence findings and activities. She said the relevant committees of the German parliament, which meet behind closed doors, would be informed about these matters.
In January, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, appointed by US President Donald Trump, changed his agency's assessment of the origin of the coronavirus.