Click here to read the full article
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.
