China warns US to stop "smearing" lab leak story.

(RT) ⸻ The Chinese Foreign Ministry has criticized the US Department of Energy for politicizing the origins of Covid-19 and "smearing" China with claims that the pandemic escaped from a laboratory. The WHO-China joint mission concluded that the laboratory origin is "considered to be extremely unlikely" and has received extensive recognition from the international community. The first reports of the virus came from Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, and home to the prominent virology institute. A US nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance was using funding from the US National Institutes of Health to research bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The natural origin hypothesis is that the virus evolved in animals and crossed to humans somehow, but no host species or "patient zero" have been found to support this. The White House has sought to distance itself from the DoE leaks to the Wall Street Journal, noting that the reported conclusions were labeled "low confidence" and that other US intelligence agencies have not yet weighed in.