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Bei­jing has claimed that coro­n­avirus may have spawned out­side Chi­na and trav­elled to a wet mar­ket in Wuhan via frozen food exports from coun­tries includ­ing Australia.

An arti­cle in the gov­ern­ment-con­trolled Glob­al Times news­pa­per on Sun­day said the idea the virus was import­ed into the Hua­nan wet mar­ket last year ‘can­not be ruled out’ — although it admit­ted there is no sup­port­ing evidence.

Bei­jing has been push­ing the the­o­ry since Octo­ber when experts trac­ing an out­break in Qing­dao city found liv­ing coro­n­avirus sam­ples on pack­ets of import­ed frozen cod.

West­ern sci­en­tists say the the­o­ry is ‘high­ly spec­u­la­tive’ and believe it is much more like­ly that the dis­ease first passed from ani­mals to humans in Wuhan.