© Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff The home of Jie Li of Belmont, a now-fired Biogen employee accused of spreading coronavirus to China.

A statistician who was working in Massachusetts for Biogen Inc., the sponsor of the now infamous Boston meeting at the epicenter of the state’s COVID-19 outbreak, is being investigated in Beijing for allegedly flying to her native China while sick, not disclosing her exposure to coronavirus to the airline, and covering up her fever with drugs, according to reports in Chinese-based media.

Chinese authorities are considering if Jie Li of Belmont, who was associate director of biostatistics for Biogen, according to an online profile, broke the law by impeding the prevention of infectious disease, according to government-controlled Chinese media. Li, 37, is from Chongqing, a Chinese megacity of some 30 million people, but has lived extensively in the United States, the reports say.

She arrived in China on March 13, and has been widely vilified in Chinese media in recent days, after a Beijing official cited her case at a news conference.

Li did not attend the Feb. 26-27 Biogen meeting at the Marriott Long Wharf Hotel but had contact with someone who did, said David Caouette, spokesman for the Cambridge-based biotechnical firm.

The Xinhua News Agency, an official Chinese government media outlet, reports that Li has the virus, but it is unclear if that report is based on a test taken in the United States or in China.

Li did not inform her superiors at Biogen that she was leaving, said Caouette. She left during a transition period when employees were beginning to work from home to combat the spread of the virus.

Biogen officials knew nothing of the controversy in Beijing until it was reported in Chinese media, according to the company.

“We can confirm that Ms. Li was a U.S Biogen employee who made the personal decision to travel to China without informing the company and ignoring the guidance of health experts,” said Caouette in a statement Thursday. “We are deeply dismayed by the situation as reported by the media in China.”

Biogen this week terminated Li’s employment.

Beijing investigators could not be directly reached by phone.

Messages left on Li’s phone were not returned. It is also unclear from Chinese news reports if reporters in China have sought comment from Li or her family.

A letter from the Belmont Department of Health, addressed to Jie Li, was taped to the front door of the family’s white split level ranch that they bought in 2015, in a quiet Belmont neighborhood. A holiday wreath hung above the letter, a snow shovel was squeezed behind a bush and a recycling bin lay tipped to its side in the driveway with a Dunkin’ Donuts cup spilling out. No one answered the door when a Globe reporter stopped by Thursday.

Ninety-seven of the 256 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Massachusetts as of Wednesday afternoon, or 38 percent, have been linked to Biogen’s Feb. 26-27 leadership meeting at the Marriott Long Wharf Hotel on the Boston waterfront. The meeting brought together about 175 employees of the multi-national biotechnical company, which makes therapies for neurological diseases. It is still unclear how or from whom the virus originally spread at the event, but within days dozens of Biogen executives began feeling sick.

Chinese media reports, quoting Beijing officials, say Li developed common symptoms of COVID-19, such as a fever and a cough, while still in the United States, and visited a doctor here several times.

She was among a number of Biogen employees tested for COVID-19 in early March at Massachusetts General Hospital, but Li left the United States before the results of her test were known, according to a person with knowledge of her situation, who asked to be anonymous because they were not authorized to speak about it.

The Belmont Health Department released a statement Thursday saying that a Belmont Fire Department EMS crew responded to a call from Li’s address earlier this month regarding a resident with flu-like symptoms. The caller asked to be transferred to a Boston-area hospital for COVID-19 testing. Ultimately, the caller said she would drive herself to the hospital rather than being transported by ambulance. The statement did not give specific dates.

Two days after that call, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health notified the Belmont Health Department that the Belmont resident had tested positive for COViD-19, the statement said. The Belmont Health Department attempted to contact the resident in-person at the house, as well as by phone and text message, but they never connected with her.

A concerned member of the public later reached out to the Belmont Health Department with word of the Chinese media reports that they believed described the Belmont resident. The Belmont Health Department contacted the Massachusetts Department of Health, who notified the Massachusetts Port Authority, who got in touch with travelers that might have come into contact with Li and her family during travel.

According to Chinese media reports, Li is accused of taking antipyretics, which are anti-fever drugs, before her flight to reduce her fever so as to not alert airline officials measuring the body temperatures of passengers to screen for possible coronavirus infections.

It is not clear by what means Li, her husband, and her son traveled from Boston to Los Angeles, where they allegedly caught a China Air flight to Beijing on March 12. Before the plane departed from the Los Angeles airport around 2 a.m., Li allegedly did not disclose her health status, or her family’s, to flight attendants, according to reports.

Reports say that an hour after the plane took off, Li told a flight attendant she was uncomfortable and not feeling well, and was moved to the rear of the cabin and separated from other passengers by a curtain. Only later did she disclose she had been running a fever, reports said. The flight landed after 13 hours in the air, around 5 a.m. local time the following day.

Chinese news reports say Li is being treated in a hospital for a coronavirus infection and that her husband has also tested positive. Nearly 60 people who were in close proximity to her on the plane are in quarantine, reports say.

Another major city in China, Wuhan, was the original hub of the COVID-19 outbreak, which was believed to have begun in late 2019. The city experienced the worst of the pandemic in early February, and enacted heavy-handed containment measures to slow the spread. Today, China’s new infections have dwindled, with imported cases, such as Li’s, regularly outnumbering domestic ones. The National Health Commission said Thursday that they had no new domestic cases, and all of the 34 new infections reported the previous day were imported cases for the first time since the new coronavirus emerged.

Li studied at the University of Science and Technology of China, and then earned her doctorate degree in statistics from the University of Iowa in 2009, according to her profile on LinkedIn. She worked as a statistician at Biogen from 2015 to 2018, left to work for another company, and then returned to Biogen in February 2019, according to LinkedIn.