Had China planned for weaponizing Coronaviruses in 2015?

Bhubaneswar: Amidst rigorous investigation into origin of deadly Coronavirus that has devastated entire world, new explosive documents obtained by the US State Department have put China in dock once again.

The ‘bombshell’ documents first released by ‘The Australian’ revealed that China had reportedly thought of weaponisation of Coronaviruses five years before the pandemic originated and spread to other countries.

According to media reports referring to the military document titled ‘The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, revealed that People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commanders had predicted that the World War-3 would be fought with biological weapons and the Chinese military scientists were thinking about military application for different strains of the coronavirus in 2015.

Further, the Chinese documents claimed that a bioweapon attack could collapse healthcare system in enemy countries.

The Chinese scientists had described SARS coronaviruses, of which COVID-19 only novel variant, as ‘new era of genetic weapons’.

The US Department reportedly obtained the documents written by Chinese military scientists in 2015 as part of probe into origin of COVID-19.

Earlier, speculations were rife that SARS could have been a man-made biological weapon deliberately unleashed by China.

Though there is no evidence that COVID-19 is man-made, the question remains whether the virus might have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, from where the pandemic originated.

The first COVID-19 case was reported in central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. Since then, the deadly virus transformed into a pandemic affecting more than 157.9 million people and claiming over 3.28 million lives worldwide.