China’s Ambassador to America Cui Tiankai repeated an increasingly vocal demand out of Beijing on Sunday for the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) to treat the United States as a potential origin location for the Chinese coronavirus, despite no scientific evidence suggesting this is possible.
The Chinese coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. The first confirmed case of Chinese coronavirus, according to leaked Chinese documents revealed by the South China Morning Post, was identified on November 17, 2019. No evidence exists anywhere in the world for a confirmed novel coronavirus case emerging anywhere else in the world before this date.
The Chinese Communist Party has not confirmed – or denied – the legitimacy of the South China Morning Post leak and does not consider that date a viable origin point in investigating where the virus first began infecting human beings. Chinese government officials have pointed to reports suggesting that early cases of the virus occurred in places like Italy and Brazil, but those reports do not specify a date before November 17.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespersons have also claimed, in their official capacity, that the Chinese coronavirus originated at a U.S. Army facility in Maryland, and that Washington covered up the initial outbreak by diagnosing cases as incidents of e-cigarette lung injury. Beijing has never provided any evidence for this claim or explained how a highly contagious coronavirus infection could pass for a lung injury, which is not contagious and does not require patient isolation.
