<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">FBI Director Christopher Wray has said that the bureau believes Covid-19 "most likely" originated in a "Chinese government-controlled lab".</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident," he told Fox News.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is the first public confirmation of the FBI's classified judgement of how the pandemic virus emerged.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">China has denied a lab leak in Wuhan, calling the allegation defamatory.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Wray's comments come a day after the US ambassador to China called for the country to "be more honest" about Covid's origins.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In his interview on Tuesday, Mr Wray said China "has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate" efforts to identify the source of the global pandemic.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And that's unfortunate for everybody," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some studies suggest the virus made the leap from animals to humans in Wuhan, China, possibly at the city's seafood and wildlife market.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The market is a 40-minute drive from a world-leading virus laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducted research into coronaviruses.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Other US government agencies have drawn differing conclusions to the FBI's, with varying degrees of confidence in their findings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">US media reported on Sunday that the US energy department had assessed with "low confidence" that Covid leaked from a lab. The agency had formerly said it was undecided on how the virus began.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that US President Joe Biden supports "a whole-of-government effort" to discover how Covid began.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But he added that US still lacks a clear consensus as to what happened.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We're just not there yet," he said. "If we have something that is ready to be briefed to the American people and the Congress, we will do that."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An unclassified report released by the US top spy official in October 2021 said that four US intelligence agencies had assessed with "low confidence" that it had originated with an infected animal or a related virus.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For months, at the height of the pandemic, the lab leak hypothesis was widely dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory. Top health officials publicly rejected the idea that the coronavirus could have been created in a lab before escaping.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A World Health Organization (WHO) investigation called the lab leak theory "extremely unlikely", but after deep criticism of that investigation, the agency's director-general called for a new inquiry, saying: "All hypotheses remain open and require further study."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Covid-19 first emerged in late 2019 and has since led to the deaths of nearly seven million people. BBC</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>