evidence: It's a suspicion that the coronavirus may have escaped, accidentally or otherwise, from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where the virus was first recorded. [...] Prof Shi Zhengli - often referred to as "China's Batwoman" - a researcher at the Wuhan Institute, published a report in 2021 revealing that her team had identified eight coronavirus strains found on bats in the mine in China in 2015. The paper says that coronaviruses from pangolins pose more of an immediate threat to human health than the ones her team found in the mine. Added to this is an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory long pushed by Chinese propagandists - and repeated by Mao Ning at the foreign ministry briefing on 1 March 2023 - suggesting the coronavirus was made and leaked from Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, about 80km (50 miles) north of Washington DC.