Germany’s foreign intelligence service in 2020 has deposited 80% to 90% of the probability that the Coronavirus behind the COVVI-19 pandemic was accidentally released from the China China China Chinese Institute of Virology, two German newspapers reported on Wednesday.
According to a joint report of Die Zeit and Sueddeutscher Zeitung publications, the German spy agency BND indicated that the Institute had carried out experience gain experience, according to which viruses are modified to become more transmitted for humans for research purposes.
It has also been indicated that many violations of security regulations have occurred in the laboratory, the newspapers said.
The evaluation of espionage agencies was based on an unpertified intelligence operation of the “Saaremaa” code as well as on publicly available data. He had been commissioned by the German Chancellor’s office at the time, Angela Merkel, but never published, according to the report.
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BND refused to comment. Asked about the report at a press conference, outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz also refused to comment on Wednesday.
The documents indicated that the evaluation was however shared with the US Central Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2024.
A CIA spokesman said in January that the CIA had assessed that the COVVI-19 pandemic was more likely to be emerged from a laboratory than in nature.
The CIA said at the time that it had “low confidence” in its evaluation and that the two scenarios – origin of the laboratory and natural origin – remain plausible.
The Chinese government says it supports and participated in research to determine the origin of COVID-19, and accused Washington of politicizing the issue, especially due to the efforts of the American intelligence agencies to investigate.
Beijing said there was no credibility to say that a laboratory leak has probably caused the pandemic.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said last month that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had never been researching the coronaviruses and that it was not involved in the creation or flight of the COVVI-19 virus.
(Report by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt and Andreas Rinke in Berlin, edition by Angus Macswan)
