Chinese virologist: COVID originated in US

There are many signs that COVID was highly likely to have occurred in the US earlier than the cases found in China, said epidemiologists and virologists reached by the Global Times, Report informs.

Florida, a new COVID-19 epicenter of the US where the seven-day average cases rose to a record high of more than 18,000 in early August, is causing public concern due to its serious epidemic situation and the lack of transparency on its early cases.

People in Florida complained about the hiding of information on early local cases, which are now widely believed to have emerged earlier than the state’s officially reported patients - and even earlier than the virus outbreak in China’s Wuhan.

“To politicize the pandemic and smear China, the US may have concealed the true situation of the early spread of the virus in the country,” said Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist from Wuhan University.

A cloud of doubt has been cast over Florida’s COVID-19 information, as it temporarily removed data for its 171 early cases in May 2020. Genomic sequencing of COVID-19 has proved that the virus might have emerged in several parts of the world in late 2019 and early 2020, not only in Wuhan, Yang said.