Asked at his daily press briefing whether the coronavirus had originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, Donald Trump declined to refute the conspiracy theory — and implied that his administration is looking into it.

It was Fox correspondent John Roberts who raised the theory with the president at the Rose Garden coronavirus briefing. “Multiple sources are telling Fox News today,” he said, “that the United States government has high confidence that while the coronavirus is a naturally occurring virus, it emanated from a virology lab in Wuhan.

“Because of lax safety protocols, an intern was infected, who later infected her boyfriend and then went to the wet market in Wuhan where it began to spread. Does that correspond with what you have heard from officials?”

When Mr Trump answered him, he seemed to confirm that the unsubstantiated story is being taken seriously.

“Well I don’t wanna say that, John, but I will tell you that more and more we’re hearing the story and we’ll see. When you say multiple sources, now there’s a case when you can use the word ‘sources’, but we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened.”

Mr Roberts followed up: “In your many conversations with [China’s] president Xi, Mr president, did you ever discuss with him State Department concerns about lax safety protocols that had been reported to the State Department from the embassy in Beijing about that laboratory?”

In response, Mr Trump deferred, but seemed to confirm that the two men had discussed the possibility. “I don’t want to discuss what I talked to him about the laboratory, I just don’t want to discuss it, it’s inappropriate right now.”

The Wuhan lab conspiracy theory takes various forms. Common across all of them is the idea that the virus escaped from one of two virology research labs in the Wuhan area via either an infected human or a carrier bat, one of which made it to a so-called “wet market” where other humans were infected. According to Fox News’s latest reports, China has deliberately focused international attention on the wet markets in Wuhan to distract from the lab story and instead advance a theory of “natural” transmission.

Some proponents of the theory have gone so far as to suggest that the virus was being engineered as a bioweapon. There is currently no evidence that exists to suggest that the virus was man-made.

And following discussions on social media around the conspiracy theory, one of the scientists working on the outbreak of Covid-19 spoke out dismissing the theory entirely. “There is no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find,” Trevor Bedford, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle, The Financial Times reported.

“The evidence we have is that the mutations [in the virus] are completely consistent with natural evolution.”​

Indeed, the lab conspiracy theory was among other misinformation circulating online that prompted the World Health Organisation to issue a statement warning people about a fake news 'infodemic' in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that also includes false "cures" for sale.

Among those embracing the idea that a laboratory in Wuhan is the source of the virus, a 2017 article from the journal Nature has become a go-to text to lend scientific weight to the idea. However, the journal has now added an editor’s note to the article distancing itself from the theory: “Many stories have promoted an unverified theory that the Wuhan lab discussed in this article played a role in the coronavirus outbreak that began in December 2019.”

Loading....

The theory’s various iterations have lately been gaining currency in conservative circles, most recently boosted by a Washington Post report citing cables from US diplomats in China who visited a Wuhan lab in 2018 and cited serious concerns about its safety.

An interview on Fox News between Sean Hannity and secretary of state Mike Pompeo gave the theory oxygen – and it was Mr Pompeo who provided it.

“We know they have this lab,” the secretary said. “We know about the wet markets. We know that the virus itself did originate in Wuhan. So all those things come together.”

Besides Mr Pompeo, other government officials have acknowledged the conspiracy theory’s existence, though they have stopped short of fully endorsing it or accepting its probability.