France: No evidence COVID-19 linked to Wuhan lab

France on Friday said there was no factual evidence so far of a link between the COVID-19 outbreak and the work in Wuhan of the P4 research laboratory, which France helped set up, FRANCE 24 reported.

"We would like to make it clear that there is to this day no factual evidence corroborating recent reports in the US press linking the origins of COVID-19 and the work of the P4 laboratory of Wuhan, China," an official at President Emmanuel Macron's office said.

The broad scientific consensus holds that SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the coronavirus, originated in bats.

As far back as February, the Wuhan Institute of Virology dismissed rumors that the virus may have been artificially synthesized at one of its laboratories or perhaps escaped from such a facility.

In 2004, France signed an agreement with China to establish a research lab on infectious diseases of biosafety level 4, the highest level, in Wuhan, according to a French decree signed by then-foreign minister Michel Barnier.

The Wuhan research laboratory is home to the China Centre for Virus Culture Collection, the largest virus bank in Asia which preserves more than 1,500 strains, according to its website.

The complex contains Asia's first maximum security lab equipped to handle Class 4 pathogens (P4).

The lab was completed in 2015, and finally opened in 2018, with the founder of a French bioindustrial firm, Alain Merieux, acting as a consultant in its construction.