A number of Chinese "experts" have called on the World Health Organization to investigate other countries for the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a state-run communist propaganda news outlet on Thursday.
The Global Times, a daily tabloid supported by the Chinese Communist Party, published its article while a team of WHO investigators were in Wuhan, China, where the virus originated in late 2019.
The Times cited Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, as saying there had been many different virus strains, which could have originated in different places.
"The U.S. has the most diverse virus strains, which makes it the most suitable place for conducting study of origins," Yang told the propaganda newspaper.
Although Chinese officials have admitted to destroying most of the relevant evidence regarding the origin of the virus in early 2020, the WHO investigators said they had discovered valuable information, per Breitbart.
Exactly what information had been found was not specified.
The first known human case of coronavirus was diagnosed in Wuhan on Nov. 17, 2019, according to Chinese government documents leaked last year to the South China Morning Post.
The WHO team said the Chinese government had allowed them to investigate key locations, such as the Huanan Seafood Market, where the first cases of confirmed COVID-19 cases reportedly originated, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which Trump administration officials claimed might have leaked an organism that caused the outbreak.
The Chinese Communist Party insists the virus originated at a U.S. Army facility in Maryland, an unsubstantiated claim.
The Times said alleged Chinese experts were encouraging the WHO to conduct virus-tracing work in other countries.
"They should set a timeline, according to which they can collect blood samples of patients dating even back to 2019, especially those who suffered from pneumonia, to see if there's anything suspicious," Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Times.
The newspaper also claimed cases of coronavirus were found in the U.S., Spain, Italy, France, Brazil and India before it appeared in China. The Chinese Communist Party provided no evidence.
Other so-called experts told the Times no answers would be found in Wuhan, and the virus likely was brought to China either by travelers or foreign imported food.