page_title: Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic
section_title: Chinese biological weapon
hierarchical_section_title: Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic / Conspiracy theories / Chinese biological weapon
caption_attribution_description: English: Official portrait of Mr Tobias Ellwood
context_page_description: The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in misinformation and conspiracy theories about the scale of the pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease. False information, including intentional disinformation, has been spread through social media, text messaging, and mass media, including the tabloid media, conservative media, and state media of countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and Turkmenistan. It has also been reportedly spread by covert operations backed by states such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and China to generate panic and sow distrust in other countries. In some countries, such as India, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia, journalists have been arrested for allegedly spreading fake news about the pandemic.
  Misinformation has been propagated by celebrities, politicians, and other prominent public figures. Commercial scams have claimed to offer at-home tests, supposed preventives, and "miracle" cures. Several religious groups have claimed their faith will protect them from the virus.
context_section_description: In January 2020, BBC News published an article about SARS-CoV-2 misinformation, citing two 24 January articles in The Washington Times that said the virus was part of a Chinese biological weapons program, based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The Washington Post later published an article debunking the theory, citing US experts who explained why the WIV was unsuitable for military use, that most countries had abandoned bioweapon programs as failures, and that there was no evidence the virus was genetically engineered.
  On 6 February, the White House asked scientists and medical researchers to rapidly investigate the origins of the virus both to address the current spread and "to inform future outbreak preparation and better understand animal/human and environmental transmission aspects of coronaviruses".
  The Inverse reported that "Christopher Bouzy, the founder of Bot Sentinel, conducted a Twitter analysis for Inverse and found [online] bots and trollbots are making an array of false claims. These bots are claiming China intentionally created the virus, that it's a biological weapon, that Democrats are overstating the threat to hurt Donald Trump and more. While we can't confirm the origin of these bots, they are decidedly pro-Trump."
caption: Tobias Ellwood said, "It would be irresponsible to suggest the source of this outbreak was an error in a Chinese military biological weapons programme ... But without greater Chinese transparency we cannot [be] entirely completely sure."[110]
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