BEIJING, March 13, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – A Chinese official has suggested that
the US army may have brought the deadly coronavirus into China, without
providing any evidence for his claim.
Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesman, made the assertion on Twitter
late Thursday, echoing similar claims proliferating on Chinese social media
that blame the US for the pandemic.
The head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention has said
himself that the source of the virus was wild animals sold at a market in the
central city of Wuhan.
But in recent days, Chinese officials and a prominent health expert have
claimed that the virus may have originated elsewhere as Beijing has angrily
hit back at US officials for calling the disease the “Wuhan virus”.
In his tweet, Zhao posted a video of the head of the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention testifying before Congress that some Americans who
were believed to have died from the flu were posthumously diagnosed with the
COVID-19 illness.
“CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many
people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals?” Zhao tweeted.
“It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent!
Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
Chinese officials have themselves been accused of attempting to cover up
the 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.
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”, saying China’s tough quarantine
measures to contain the virus had won the world “hard-won precious time”.