Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, concluded that the outbreak of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic in 2020 could well have been triggered by an accident at a Chinese laboratory that does virus research, German media reported on Wednesday.

The pandemic caused the death of millions of people across the world from the respiratory illness COVID-19, while fallout from the catastrophe continues to dog global economies and drive social tensions.

Alleged risky virus research methods in Wuhan

According to reports in the German papers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Zeit, the BND based its conclusion on the analysis of material from the public domain and that it collected in the course of an investigation with the code name "Saaremaa."

The material, some of which came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the Chinese city where the pandemic is believed to have started, indicated that there had been some risky research methods used there, compounded by breaches of laboratory safety rules, the reports said.

The papers said there was evidence that Wuhan researchers carried out so-called gain-of-function experiments, in which viruses occurring in nature are manipulated. Such research can cause changes in the way a virus causes illness, its transmissibility and the types of hosts it can infect.

There were also indications that there had been numerous violations of safety regulations at the lab,according to the reports.

The BND reached its conclusions as early as 2020, the papers said, giving them a likelihood rating of 80% to 95%, but the assessment was kept from the public at the time.

What does China say about COVID's origins?

China has always denied that the Wuhan lab was responsible for the outbreak.

However, in January, the US secret service, the CIA, said it was also of the opinion that the coronavirus behind the pandemic, named SARS-CoV-2, likely came from a laboratory, although it cautioned that it had "low confidence" in the finding.

The FBI also made a similar statement in March 2023.

Other theories that have been put forward is that the pandemic first broke out in 2019 in a market selling meat from wild animals in Wuhan.

Edited by: Natalie Muller