Overview

• Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, concluded in 2020 that there was an 80-95% likelihood that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• The intelligence report cited gain-of-function research and safety violations at the Wuhan lab as contributing factors to the outbreak, based on public data and an operation codenamed 'Saaremaa.'
• Angela Merkel, then chancellor, reportedly chose to keep the findings confidential, and her successor Olaf Scholz also refrained from disclosing the assessment after taking office in 2021.
• The suppressed report has resurfaced through investigations by German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, raising questions about government transparency and accountability.
• China continues to deny the lab leak theory, while international agencies, including the CIA, have also assessed the lab origin as plausible but inconclusive.