The problem for the lab-leak position is that the U.S. has never had access to the Wuhan lab and has thus been unable to reach a definitive answer for more than five years. Now that the CIA has at last come to a conclusion, not all scientists are sold on what it has reported, seeing the results as thinly scientifically sourced.

Beijing dismissed the CIA's claim that COVID-19 likely originated from a lab, calling it “extremely unlikely.” The Chinese government pointed to findings from the China-WHO joint expert team, which concluded that a lab leak was highly improbable.

Foreign ministry spokesman Mao Ning said the laboratory leak conclusion being extremely unlikely was reached by the China-WHO joint expert team based on field visits to relevant Wuhan laboratories.

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