China’s Foreign Ministry has strongly denied a Wall Street Journal report suggesting the novel coronavirus might have escaped from a laboratory. The Journal reports that three employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill with COVID-like symptoms in the autumn of 2019 and were hospitalized in November of that year — before the first recorded case of COVID-19. The Wall Street Journal based its reporting on a “previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report.” China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the finding.

Zhao Lijian: “The United States continues to hype up the lab leak theory. Does it care about traceability, or is it just trying to distract attention?”

In March, the World Health Organization said its investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic found it was “extremely unlikely” that the novel coronavirus emerged from a laboratory. But many scientists are calling on the WHO to further investigate the possibility.