China Rules Out Animal Market and Lab as Coronavirus Origin

Comments by Chinese scientists aim to counter what Beijing perceives as efforts from top U.S. officials to focus solely on China’s role in pandemic

On Dec. 1, 2019, a patient in Wuhan, China, started showing symptoms of what doctors determined was a new coronavirus. Since then, the virus has spread across the world. Here’s how the virus grew to a global pandemic. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images (Originally published March 17, 2020)
By

James T. Areddy

Chinese scientists in recent days said they had ruled out both a laboratory and an animal market in the city of Wuhan as possible origins of the coronavirus pandemic, in their most detailed pushback to date against allegations from U.S. officials and others over what might have sparked it.

The director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, at the center of allegations around a potential laboratory accident, Wang Yanyi, over the weekend told China Central Television that the coronavirus was significantly different from any live...