Washington: The US government's national laboratory report prepared in May 2020 on the origins of Covid-19 claimed that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab in Wuhan, as reported by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, citing people familiar with the classified document.
"The hypothesis claiming the virus leaked from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation", said a study prepared by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
The Lawrence Livermore's "Z Division" drew its assessment based on genomic analysis of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes Covid19.
However, the national laboratory has declined to make any comment on the study.
The findings of the US State Department's probe into the pandemic's origins were made public in a January 15 fact sheet. It listed a series of circumstantial reasons on why the Covid-19 outbreak might have originated as a result of a lab accident.
"The US government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV (Wuhan Institute of Virology) became sick in autumn 2019" concluded the assertion Which is partly based on a US intelligence report that three WIV researchers became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.
Lawrence Livermore's study is attracting fresh interest after US President Joe Biden ordered the intelligence community to re-double efforts to examine how the virus originated, last month. He has asked the agencies to report to him within 90 days on how the virus emerged, including the details on lab accident theory.
China has, however, dismissed the Wuhan lab leak theory as "extremely impossible" and has accused the US of "political manipulation.