China on Thursday urged caution and political restraint in the wake of reports that Germany's BND intelligence agency gathered plausible evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated with a laboratory leak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Germany intelligence agency claims an 80-90% chance of a Covid-19 lab leak from Wuhan. China denies the claim, while global intelligence and scientific communities remain divided on the pandemic's origins.

The German government for years concealed an assessment by its Foreign Intelligence Service that a lab origin of COVID-19 was overwhelmingly likely, according to a Tuesday investigative report by two German newspapers.

CLASSIFIED intelligence on the outbreak of Covid immediately “set off alarm bells”, a former US State Department investigator said. Arms control expert Thomas DiNanno was warned not to

China denies German media reports of an assessment carried out by spying agency BND in 2020 supporting the theory.

Germany's BND intelligence agency reportedly gathered plausible evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated with a laboratory leak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, according to reports by three newspapers on Wednesday.

The spy agency assessment's was based on an unspecified intelligence operation code-named "Saaremaa" as well as on publicly-available data. It had been commissioned by the office of Germany's chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, but never published, the report said.

German foreign intelligence reportedly concluded years ago that COVID-19 likely emerged from the Wuhan lab. Now, the cover-up may have finally ended.

Germany's spy agency thinks an accident in a Chinese lab likely led to the COVID-19 pandemic, media say. Evidence it collected allegedly indicates negligence at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.