China revives conspiracy theory of US army link to Covid

Suspicions about army lab spread on social media after official's tit-for-tat response to US claim

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Attempts by Chinese authorities to shift the narrative around Covid-19's origins have reignited on social media this week after a government spokesperson revived a conspiracy theory that it came from a US army lab.

Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for the foreign affairs ministry, was responding to a US state department fact sheet" released last week that claimed there was new evidence of researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology falling ill before the first known cases of Covid-19 in the city. The state department did not provide data to back up its assertions.