The FBI said it concluded that COVID-19 likely originated from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, the bureau’s director Christopher Wray announced late Tuesday.

The assessment came following years of debate as other government officials have suggested that the virus likely came from a wet market in the region.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray said. “I will just make the observation that the Chinese government has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we're doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing.”

In 2021, the office of the director of national intelligence said in a declassified report that it judged “the virus was not developed as a biological weapon.”

“Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way,” the report added.

U.S. intelligence believes cases of COVID-19 start popping up no later than November 2019, with clusters of cases forming in December 2019.

Within months, and despite lockdowns in much of China, cases began spreading worldwide, disrupting daily life.

But the U.S. and other world governments say that China has made it challenging for them to trace the virus back to its origins.

“The (intelligence community) — and the global scientific community — lacks clinical samples or a complete understanding of epidemiological data from the earliest COVID-19 cases. If we obtain information on the earliest cases that identified a location of interest or occupational exposure, it may alter our evaluation of hypotheses,” wrote the office of the director of national intelligence in its 2021 report.

GENEVA — The United States and more than a dozen other countries are expressing concerns about a World Health Organization study into the possible origins of the coronavirus in China, pointing to delays and a lack of access to samples and data.

A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 published Tuesday says transmission of the coronavirus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and a lab leak is “extremely unlikely.”

It called for further study, and the WHO chief has said all hypotheses remain open.

After the study’s release, the State Department said 14 countries were calling for “momentum” for a second-phase look by experts and pointed to the need for further animal studies “to find the means of introduction into humans” of the coronavirus.

The countries expressed support for WHO’s experts and staff, citing their “tireless” work toward ending the pandemic and understanding its origins to help prevent a future one. But they said the study had been “significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data and samples.”

Critics say China’s government it took too long to allow a WHO-convened team of experts into the country earlier this year.

The State Department said Australia, Britain, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Slovenia and South Korea released the joint statement.