Beijing rejected the CIA’s findings that COVID-19 was likely leaked from a Chinese research laboratory. “It is ‘extremely unlikely’ that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak — this is the authoritative conclusion reached by the experts of the WHO-China joint mission based on science following their field trips to the lab in Wuhan

The nuanced finding suggests the agency believes the totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely than a natural origin.

The Central Intelligence Agency has assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely to have emerged from a lab than from nature, an agency spokesperson said on Saturday. The agency had for years said it could not conclude whether COVID-19 was the result of a lab incident or originated in nature.