"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident," he told Fox News. "There's been an accumulation of evidence (what we know about the viruses biology, the close variants circulating in bats and locations of early human cases) that firmly points to a natural origin centred on the Huanan market in Wuhan city," he said. A bipartisan panel of US lawmakers this week kicked off a series of hearings on the "existential" threat of the ruling Chinese Communist Party