Now, China makes absurd claims on coronavirus origin

China has been making it harder for the world to solve the mystery around the origins of the Wuhan virus.

At a time when the WHO team is conducting an investigation in Wuhan, China has escalated its misinformation campaign. First, China floated new theories about the transmission of the virus. Beijing has been driving efforts to promote the claim that the virus spreads through the cold chain.

Several experts have raised doubts over these claims, however, reports say China has tried to convince the World Health Organisation(WHO) to acknowledge the theory.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal had published a story which said the WHO has been caught between China and the western powers as the world health body had allegedly shared the draft of its new advice claiming the virus can spread through the cold chain and trigger an outbreak in countries that have managed to contain the virus.

The WHO has been formulating new advice for the public on the issue. A draft sent to the Wall Street Journal warns that the virus could spread via the cold chain and be reintroduced into countries where the pandemic is under control but the WHO later made a U-turn. It said the draft wasn't cleared for publication and sharing it was a mistake.

The United States, European Union and several other governments have disputed China's claims on the cold chains. The US, EU and several other governments have meanwhile disputed Beijing’s assessment of the evidence, as have many experts outside China.

Experts believe if china can get the WHO to sign off on it, it will help Beijing convince the world that the virus could have come from anywhere and the pandemic didn't begin in Wuhan.

It is a clear attempt to cast doubts over what the world already knows about the virus. China has been pushing conspiracy theories as well. A story about a biological lab is going viral on Chinese social media. Not the Wuhan lab but the Fort Detrick laboratory in Maryland, United States.

It all began with a statement from the Chinese foreign ministry as almost a week back a spokesperson made a rather absurd demand. She wanted America to open up the Detrick lab in Maryland to WHO investigators.

"The fact that the US government turns a blind eye to all the truths precisely demonstrates how some American politicians are comfortable with turning lies into 'truths' as long as they serve to attack and smear China. I would like to stress that if the United States truly respects facts, it should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-plus overseas bio-labs, invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States, and respond to the concerns from the international community with real actions," foreign affairs spokesman Hua Chunying said.

China has now come up with its own lab theory to defect the global attention on the Wuhan lab. The claims around the Wuhan lab are perhaps as old as the pandemic. It has been at the centre of several theories with claims floated around that the Wuhan virus was engineered at this lab. While scientists reject the claim that the virus was made in a lab, experts do not rule out the possibility that researchers could be studying samples of this virus and it could have escaped from the facility.

The is a claim was raised aggressively by the Trump administration which demanded that China open up the Wuhan lab to outside investigators especially the WHOinstead of doing that China has raised the demand for an investigation into American labs first.

The world might find it preposterous but, within China the conspiracy theory went viral alongside exaggerated claims about the Pfizer vaccine. The Chinese press has claimed that the Pfizer shot is killing the elderly.