Nairobi News

“It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”

Zhao doubled-down on Friday, tweeting an article that he said showed “further evidence that the virus originated in the US”.

The Montreal-based website where the article appears, globalresearch.ca, is replete with conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Chinese officials have themselves been accused of attempting to cover up the coronavirus outbreak as police in Wuhan reprimanded and silenced doctors who had raised the alarm about the virus as early as December.

US officials have angered China by linking the virus with the country, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling it the “Wuhan virus”.

The Foreign ministry has rejected the term as “despicable” and “disrespecting science”.

More than 130,000 people have been infected by the virus and nearly 5,000 have died across the world so far.

Robert O’Brien, the US National Security Adviser, insisted on Wednesday that the birthplace of the virus was China.

“This virus did not originate in the United States, it originated in Wuhan,” O’Brien said at the Heritage Foundation think-tank.

“Unfortunately, rather than using best practices, this outbreak in Wuhan was covered up,” he said.

He said China had “cost the world community two months to respond” to the epidemic, which has now killed nearly 5,000 people and infected more than 130,000 worldwide.

Had China been more cooperative and allowed foreign experts on the ground earlier, he said, “we could have dramatically curtailed what happened both in China and what is now happening across the world”.

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang on Thursday called OBrien’s remarks “extremely immoral and also irresponsible”.