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The German Foreign Intelligence Service believed that there was a probability of 80-90% that the Coronavirus accidentally filtered from a Chinese laboratory, German media say.
Two German newspapers say they have discovered details of an evaluation carried out by the BND Espionage Agency in 2020 but never published.
The Intelligence Service had indications that the Wuhan Virology Institute had been doing experiments in which viruses are modified to be more transmissible for humans for research, they say.
China repeated its denial saying that the cause “should be determined by scientists,” and pointed out an investigation by the World Health Organization that found that laboratory can theory was “extremely unlikely.”
There is no consensus on the cause of Covid pandemic.
The laboratory escape hypothesis has been very disputed by scientistsincluding many who say there is no definitive evidence that supports it.
But the theory that was once controversial has been gaining ground among some intelligence agencies, and the BND is the last to entertain the theory. In January, The United States CIA said The coronavirus was “more likely” to have leaked from a laboratory than to have come from animals.
According at the moment and Sueddeutscher ZeitungThe BND gathered in Berlin in 2020 to analyze the origin of the coronavirus in an operation called Saaremaa Project.
He evaluated laboratory theory as “probable”, although he had no definitive evidence.
The BND also found indications that there had been several violations of the security regulations in the laboratory.
The evaluation was commissioned by Angela Merkel’s office, German chancellor at that time, but was never publicly known until now.
According to the documents, the findings were shared with the CIA in autumn last year.
In January of this year, the CIA said that a “origin related to research” of the pandemic was more likely that a natural origin “based on the available body of reports”, although it warned that it had “little confidence” in this determination.
Both the BND and the outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz declined to comment.
The spokeswoman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MAO NO, said in response: “We believe that tracking the origin of COVID-19 is a scientific problem that scientists must determine with a scientific approach.
“The conclusion that the team of joint experts from China, to whom a laboratory escape was made, was extremely unlikely after the visits on the site to relevant laboratories in Wuhan and in -depth discussions with the researchers.
“This authorized scientific conclusion has been widely recognized by the international community and the scientific community.
“China firmly opposes any form of political manipulation on the issue of Covid-19 origin.”
WHO’s research in early 2021 saw a team of scientists fly to Wuhan in a mission to analyze the pandemic source.
After spending 12 days there, which included a visit to the laboratory, the team concluded that Lab-Rerek’s theory was “extremely unlikely.”
But many have questioned their findings since then, with a prominent group of scientists who criticize WHO for not taking the laboratory can theory seriously, he was fired in a few pages of a report of several hundred pages.
The supporters of the hypothesis of natural origin, which was supported in the WHO report, say that Covid -19 emerged in the bats and then jumped to humans, most likely through another animal or “intermediary guest.”
This hypothesis was widely accepted at the beginning of the pandemic, but as time has been used, scientists have not found a virus or bats or other animal that coincides with the genetic composition of COVID-19, which leads some to doubt the theory.
