A Chinese scientist is clapping back at the U.S. for alleging the coronavirus came from China, saying it could have come from an American lab.
Shi Yi, a microbiologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the United States could be an origin point of the virus until officials prove otherwise, according to the Chinese state-run media outlet Global Times.
The scientist said American officials had "not given any public response" to a Chinese Communist Party conspiracy theory that an Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, was the origin of the virus.
China has offered no evidence supporting this claim, but Shi said he could not comment on it until the U.S. engages in "mutual corroboration of the abundant biological information and epidemiological evidence available."
The U.S. Army conspiracy theory was first put out by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The Chinese newspaper then picked it up.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian suggested in March that the U.S. infected Wuhan, China, with the virus. The World Health Organization later said there was no evidence to support the claim.
In another article published Thursday, the Chinese paper cited a Wuhan University scientist insistent that Wuhan wasn't the origin of the virus outbreak.
The official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, the People's Daily, published several articles rebutting theories that the virus was "artificially engineered" in a lab.
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