China lab rejects US conspiracy theory about origin of coronavirus

This photo, taken on April 14, 2020, shows a staff member cleaning the floor after all patients left Leishenshan Hospital in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei Province. (By AFP)

The director of a high-security laboratory based in the Chinese city of Wuhan has denied US allegations that the new coronavirus originated in the facility or an affiliated lab.

The new coronavirus, which first emerged in Wuhan in December last year and quickly spread to the rest of the world, has now infected over 2.3 million people and killed nearly 170,000 others across the globe, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to link the virus to China, calling it the “China Virus” or the “Wuhan Virus.”

On Saturday, Trump went further by saying that his administration was investigating to determine whether the virus emanated from a lab in China.

Yuan Zhiming, the vice director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said in an interview that this was a “conspiracy theory” designed to “confuse” people.

“There’s no way this virus came from us,” adding that they “have a strict regulatory regime and code of conduct of research, so we are confident.”

The institute had already dismissed the accusation in February, saying it had shared information about the pathogen with the World Health Organization (WHO) in early January.

The conspiracy theory, which first came up in February, claims the new coronavirus may have been artificially synthesized at the Wuhan Institute of Virology or one of its labs or may have escaped from one such facility.

Trump has threatened China with “consequences” if it is found to be “knowingly responsible” for the pandemic. The US president and his aides have accused Beijing of a lack of transparency about the viral outbreak. He has also suspended aid to the WHO, accusing it of being “China-centric.”

Analysts say Trump, who is seeking re-election in November, is trying to use Beijing to help deflect from the shortcomings of his own response to the pandemic.

The president is under fire for his handling of the crisis, as his country has become the worst-hit nation in the world with 735, 287 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 39,090 deaths.