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.

New findings add weight to the theory that COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Experts point to lax security measures and allege China manipulated scientific journals to obscure the virus’s origins.

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.