Attempts by Chinese authorities to shift the narrative around Covid-19’s origins have reignited on social media this week after a government spokesperson revived a conspiracy theory that it came from a US army lab.
Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for the foreign affairs ministry, was responding to a US state department “fact sheet” released last week that claimed there was new evidence of researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology falling ill before the first known cases of Covid-19 in the city. The state department did not provide data to back up its assertions.
Hua accused the US of spreading “conspiracy theories and lies” as part of the “last-day madness of Mr Liar”, apparently referring to either Donald Trump or his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.
“I’d like to stress that if the United States truly respects facts, it should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-plus overseas bio-labs, invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States, and respond to the concerns from the international community with real actions,” said Hua.
On the microblogging platform Weibo, the Chinese hashtag for “biological laboratory in US Fort Detrick” has been viewed more than 900m times, with comments latching on to the conspiracy theory that the US could be the source.
“The origin of coronavirus – American virus!” said one commenter. Another said: “Apologise to the bats!”
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