Experts from the US Department of Energy concluded that COVID-19 most likely spread due to a leak from a laboratory in China, reported the Wall Street Journal.

The Ministry is responsible for the operation of the national network of laboratories, some of which are engaged in research in the field of biology.

"The Department of Energy now agrees with the FBI that the virus likely began to spread because of an incident at a laboratory in China," the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

It said the conclusion was reached after reviewing new intelligence. The FBI came to a similar conclusion using its own sources in 2021, the newspaper recalled.

So far, there is no consensus on the origins of COVID-19 among US institutions. Four government agencies, as well as a specially formed group of intelligence specialists, lean towards the theory of the natural origin of the virus. Two American ministries have not yet come to an unequivocal conclusion.

The new conclusions about the man-made origin of the virus have prompted calls for new investigations and for a response from the US government.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton called on the government to take action against China to "hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable so this doesn't happen again."

Senator Josh Hawley said he will reintroduce a bill demanding more information about what the US government has learned about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The American people deserve the full truth about the origins of COVID. (...) I will reintroduce a bill to make US government intelligence reports on COVID open to the public," he tweeted.

Shortly after the start of the pandemic, Donald Trump, who was then president of the United States, repeatedly expressed the version of the "laboratory" origin of the coronavirus, calling it the "Chinese virus".

The World Health Organization organized, together with the Chinese authorities, a mission to investigate the origin of the coronavirus in China in 2021, but without reaching definitive conclusions. A week ago, the director-general of the UN health agency, Tedros Ghebreyesus, announced that he had sent a new letter to Beijing asking for cooperation in clarifying the origin of the infection.

The pandemic began in 2020, with the first mass cases being recorded in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. The WHO has not yet lifted the pandemic alert as the infection continues to spread. The last major wave swept through China in December and January, killing between 1 million and 1.5 million people, according to independent estimates.

Follow Novinite.com on Twitter and Facebook

Write to us at editors@novinite.com

Информирайте се на Български - Novinite.bg

/Dnevnik