China says U.S. COVID origins report is without credibility

A declassified U.S. intelligence report saying it was plausible that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a laboratory is unscientific and has no credibility, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a statement on Sunday.

The updated U.S. intelligence briefing, published on Saturday, said that a natural origin and a lab leak were both plausible hypotheses to explain how SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, first infected humans, but that the truth may never be known.

In a response Sunday on the website of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang said “a lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie”, adding that U.S. intelligence services “have a reputation for fraud and deception.”