Washington, May 1 (IANS) US President Donald Trump said he has evidence that the novel coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, an unproven theory that contradicts the country's National Intelligence, which hours earlier had rejected claims of that the virus had an artificial origin.

Earlier, the US national intelligence director's office said it was still investigating the virus' origins. But the office said it had determined COVID-19 "was not manmade or genetically modified", the BBC reported. 

China has rejected the lab theory and criticised the US response to COVID-19.  Since emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of last year, the coronavirus is confirmed to have infected 3.2 million people and killed more than 230,000. 

At the White House on Thursday, Trump was asked by a reporter: "Have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?"