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.

China on Monday dismissed the possibility that the virus that caused COVID-19 leaked from a lab, after the CIA said it now favors the so-called lab leak theory over natural transmission. “It