The BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, reportedly assessed in 2020 that there was an 80-90% chance that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in China. This assessment was based on the Wuhan Institute of Virology's experiments with viruses made more contagious to humans. Despite this, the agency lacked definitive evidence.
China has repeatedly denied the lab-leak theory, emphasizing a World Health Organization investigation that deemed it "extremely unlikely." However, intelligence agencies, including the CIA, have increasingly supported the idea that the virus may have come from a lab, with the BND also citing safety violations at the Wuhan lab.