China’s official Arabic-language TV station last month aired a video arguing that the coronavirus pandemic originated outside China, and likely in the United States.

In an episode of “China View” that aired on March 17 on The Official China Global Television Network Arabic Section (CGTN Arabic), Chinese vlogger “Ms. V” said that the presence of multiple coronavirus strains in the United States, the coincidence of the initial coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, and the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, in which the U.S. participated, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s shutdown of former U.S. biological weapons research lab Fort Detrick all suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in the United States. She also asserted that many coronavirus deaths in the United States may have been attributed to influenza.

“Since the outbreak of the new coronavirus in China, some followers have asked me, do you believe a story that the new coronavirus is made by the USA? And every time my answer was: No. I can’t believe it, unless there is evidence to prove that. Now there may be some new facts indicating a new interpretation of the source of the new coronavirus,” said Ms. V.

While the outbreak was first thought to have begun in “seafood markets” in Wuhan, she said, Chinese researchers have reported in a new study that transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus actually began in December outside the market, but spread rapidly after reaching it.

“The virus may have transmitted from a source or other sources to the seafood market, where the rapid spread of transmission began due to the presence of a large number of close contacts within this place,” she said, adding that the research also found that the virus began spreading after the Wuhan International Military Games ended in October 2019.

“So, it is expected that the ‘patient zero’ in China has come from outside China,” she concluded.

Moreover, she said, “The Asahi Corporation of Japan” had recently published a report indicating that U.S. coronavirus deaths may be getting misidentified as being caused by influenza. The U.S. government, she said, had “recently recognized this possibility.”

There has been “widespread debate” on social media about the possibility that the virus was transmitted to China from abroad during the period of the Military Olympic Games in Wuhan, which was attended by 109 countries, including the United States, she said.

A Taiwan virologist, she said, had put forward the hypothesis that the virus originated in the United States, based on the premise that “it makes sense to expect a country with the most strains of the virus to be the source of the original virus, because the virus would not be born by itself.”

“If we consider viruses as one family, the first generation that passed from bats is the serious virus. The new virus developed to be group A and group B, and group B developed group C, and group C developed group D and E,” she said. “The viruses currently in China are all from group C, but the viruses in the United States are from all five groups.”

In other words, she explained, “We can say that what we found from all the viruses in China were children or grandchildren; no grandparents. So it is clear that the virus in China was transmitted from abroad. By deciphering the viral genome in Iran and Italy, we found that it is different from the nature of the virus that was discovered in China, and this also indicates that its source is not from China.”

Two months before the outbreak in China, she said, in September 2019 some Japanese nationals were found to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 following a visit to Hawaii. The Japanese had not visited China prior to traveling to Hawaii, she said. Shortly afterwards, she added, the CDC “suddenly and completely shut down the facilities, after claiming that the Fort Detrick Biological Weapons Laboratory had failed to fully prevent the loss of pathogens. Now the data related to this lab has disappeared on the internet.”

The Taiwanese virologist and “his Japanese colleague,” she said, had arrived at the same conclusion: “It is expected that the new coronavirus has started outbreaks in the United States for a while, and its symptoms were like the symptoms of other diseases, so it was easy to hide the truth.”

The vlogger then went on to say however that “we cannot be 100% sure about the validity of this analysis, because the United States has not yet announced a possible number of new cases of coronavirus from deaths thought to have been caused by influenza.”

So far, she said, there is no definitive answer in the scientific community as to the source of the pandemic.

“As the new coronavirus spreads around the world, we are looking forward to an answer from some governments, and their facing the public with greater transparency,” she said.

“I’m Ms. V, follow me, wish you all the best, bye.”