Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party-run tabloid newspaper, has claimed U.S. scientists and one Australian expert have been bullied by "far-right extremists" for opposing the Covid-19 "lab leak" theory.
"Prominent U.S. and Australian scientists focused on the Covid-19 origins tracing are now facing tremendous political pressure, and some have been sidelined for not yielding to (the) politicians-driven conspiracy theory," the Global Times said.
The World Health Organization initially recognized this theory as the most likely source of the virus, however, the U.S. intelligence community has ruled out the likelihood that the virus was deliberately or accidentally spilled from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
According to the Global Times, an Australian scientist was among those who received death threats from people with "far-right and even white supremacist leanings."
The article also said the virus may have originated in the United States rather than Wuhan.
A virologist at Wuhan University told the paper the "epidemic in the U.S. probably emerged earlier than in Wuhan."
"The U.S. has nearly all the variants spreading around the world, based on this, the virus most likely originated in the U.S. rather than the Wuhan lab," it said.
In March, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered intelligence agencies to reinvestigate the virus's origins, with a renewed emphasis on the lab leak theory.
The Chinese government only disclosed the outbreak of what was then a pneumonia-like illness on new year's eve 2019, even though a report from the University of Kent suggested the virus could have emerged in Wuhan as early as October of that year.
In January 2020, at least 430,000 people came to the U.S. from China, with over 4,000 arriving from Wuhan before health tests were implemented in mid-January.
According to research from the University of California San Diego, the first case of coronavirus in Wuhan likely occurred in mid-November 2019.
