We are at it again - the conspiracy theories surrounding the origin of coronavirus continue to make the headlines, but China refuses to budge from their stand that the outbreak didn't start from a laboratory.?
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The claims have been quashed by the head of the Wuhan lab that has been in question for being the source of COVID-19 outbreak. Reuters reports him saying that there were still no conclusive answers as to where the disease started.
Conspiracy theorists have claimed COVID-19, now responsible for more than 200,000 deaths worldwide, was synthesised by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), based in the city where the disease was first identified.
Though the scientific consensus is that the coronavirus evolved naturally, the claims that the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab have gained traction. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that his government was investigating whether it had originated in the Wuhan lab.
Yuan Zhiming, professor at WIV and the director of its National Biosafety Laboratory, told Reuters, "malicious" claims about the lab had been "pulled out of thin air" and contradicted all available evidence.
There is no concrete evidence to prove these claims and most scientists now say the virus originated in wildlife, with bats and pangolins identified as possible host species.?
It is still mystery though and there is no right answer to the questions of the virus' origin, as even China isn't quite sure about where exactly the outbreak started, although much of it has been put to the wet markets in Wuhan.?
Covid-19 has infected more than 3.1 million people and killed at least 217,000 worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.?
In the US, more than 1 million cases have been recorded, including at least 58,000 deaths.