Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected accusations of covering up her work on intelligence reports on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, her spokeswoman said today, quoted by DPA, BTA reports.
She made her statement after three newspapers wrote that in 2020 Germany's intelligence service has concluded that there is a high probability that the coronavirus accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory, but the conclusion has never been made public.
"Former Chancellor Merkel categorically rejects the accusation contained in your question," a spokeswoman told the Berlin newspaper "Tagesspiegel" after being asked whether Merkel, who left office in 2021, had concealed the information from the public.
The newspapers "Neue Zürcher Zeitung", "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and "Zeit" reported that Germany's intelligence service and the German Chancellery have asked scientists to examine the evidence surrounding the lab leak theory.
The investigators concluded that there was an 80% to 95% chance that the cause was a lab leak, the newspapers said.
According to this disputed theory, the "Sars-CoV-2" virus, which causes COVID-19, originated at the Institute of Virology in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which was conducting research related to coronaviruses, and began to spread as a result of an accident or malfunction in the laboratory.
The German investigators' findings have not been made public.
The newspaper "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" reported that while the German intelligence service believed it had credible evidence to support the theory, not all scientists on the committee were convinced.
Earlier in Beijing, China called for political restraint after reports that the German intelligence agency had gathered credible evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated from a leak from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
"On the issue of the coronavirus, China firmly rejects any form of political interference," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said in Beijing. She added that discussing scientific issues related to Covid should be left to scientists.
The spokeswoman also specified that an international team from the World Health Organization visited the Wuhan laboratory during its investigation into the origins of the pandemic in 2021. has rejected the theory that the virus leaked from her.