{{quotebox|China claimed—for almost two months—that coronavirus had originated in a Wuhan seafood market. That is not the case. @TheLancet published a study demonstrating that of the original 40 cases, 14 of them had no contact with the seafood market, including Patient Zero.<ref>https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/tom-cotton-implies-coronavirus-originated-in-wuhan-super-laboratory</ref>}}
This suggests that there was an earlier source of the virus that is unrelated to the seafood market and that has not yet been traced. If this theory is correct, the infection originated no later than November and infected the seafood market in December. The case histories and the pattern of infection were known to Chinese researchers from the beginning, so earlier reports fingering the market may have been intentionally misleading.<ref>Cohen, Jon, "[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally]," ''Science'', Jan. 26, 2020.</ref> ''[[The Washington Post]]'', which routinely publishes Chinese Communist [[propaganda]], blasted Sen. Cotton over his comments.<ref>https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/19/washington-post-uses-chinese-propaganda-in-attempt-to-blast-sen-tom-cotton-over-coronavirus-comments/</ref>
===Wuhan Institute of Virology===
Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who studied Chinese biological warfare, said the (Wuhan Institute of Virology) institute is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program. He said the secure Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the institute was engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses.
The Wuhan virology institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but certain laboratories within it “have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defence establishment,” he said. Suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent to China samples of what he described as some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus.<ref>https://greatgameindia.com/coronavirus-bioweapon/</ref>
===WHO response===