Reports: According to BND, Coronavirus Did Come from Chinese Lab - Government Has Kept Files Secret for 5 Years
The German intelligence service has apparently assumed the lab theory since the beginning of the pandemic. Several media outlets report this consistently. But the German government is keeping the files under wraps.
For five years, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has believed that coronavirus originated from a Chinese laboratory. The BND classifies the lab theory as "probable," with a certainty of "80 to 95 percent." The German government has kept the BND's findings secret since then. The virus is said to have come from the biolab in Wuhan. This is reported by NZZ, Zeit, and SZ.
To this day, it remains unclear whether the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is of natural origin or came from a laboratory. Despite intensive research, no intermediate host has been identified that naturally transmitted the pathogen from animals to humans. At the same time, controversial experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) have come into focus, supporting the lab theory.
According to the reports, there has been an exchange between several scientists at the German foreign intelligence service, the Federal Intelligence Service, initiated by the Federal Chancellery in recent weeks. The first meeting reportedly took place last year, involving renowned virologists. A central topic of these discussions was the possible origin of the virus. According to Zeit, the Chancellery has been keeping relevant information under wraps for five years.
"The information shared with the researchers and newly developed information is known to the federal government," according to the NZZ. When asked by the Swiss newspaper, a government spokesperson merely responded evasively: as a matter of principle, they do not comment publicly on intelligence findings and only report to the confidential committees of the Bundestag. Why the public was not informed about new findings remains unclear.
According to the BND, which has evaluated all available evidence, the coronavirus likely originated from a Chinese laboratory, writes Zeit. The intelligence service assesses the probability using a special system, the so-called "Probability Index," a standard for the reliability of information. The lab theory is classified by the BND as "probable," with a certainty of "80 to 95 percent." However, the service does not have conclusive proof.
In the United States, a Republican-led congressional investigation committee has been investigating the origin of the pandemic and political measures such as lockdowns in recent years. Immunologist and longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Anthony Fauci, had to testify multiple times. In the course of the investigations, thousands of pages of documents were published, providing a new perspective on the events.
Particularly explosive are the findings about so-called gain-of-function (GoF) experiments conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. These involve deliberately modifying viruses to increase their transmissibility or virulence. Official data from the US government platform USAspending.gov shows that EcoHealth Alliance received about $94.3 million in taxpayer money from NIAID between 2008 and 2024 – the agency that Fauci led for 38 years. It is notable that from 2014 onwards, increased funds were provided for the research of bat viruses.
Fauci repeatedly denied under oath that these funds were used to finance gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan. However, the available funding data contradicts this representation. The debate about the origin of the virus thus remains highly explosive – as does the question of what information governments worldwide actually possess about the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.