Editor's note:

As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the world, there has been much misinformation surrounding public discourse about the origin and transmission of the COVID-19 virus (also called SARS-CoV-2). Lies, rumors and conspiracy theories have been widely circulating on social media and some established media.

The motives behind these actions are varied, some are aimed at slandering political and ideological opponents, others target specific countries, ethnicities and religions. China is often at the receiving end of this "infodemic" of misinformation.

The following are the 16 most common rumors about the COVID-19 epidemic related to China, recently compiled and published by the Chinese embassy in Germany. All of these rumors were debunked one by one based on scientific knowledge and facts, with hope to make public discourse around the topic more informed, honest, and truthful. The original version was published in Chinese and German. China Daily did some minor editing and updated a few figures in translation.

Rumor 1: The COVID-19 virus is engineered at a Chinese laboratory

Fact: All evidence points to that SARS-CoV-2 has originated in nature.

The SARS-CoV-2 is a new type of coronavirus, which contains a family of viruses that can cause illness in animals and humans.

The World Health Organization noted that all available evidence suggests that the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else. The possible animal source of COVID-19 has not yet been confirmed, and there are only speculations that it is possibly related to bat and pangolin.

Christian Drosten, the top virologist at Berlin's Charite hospital, and 26 other renowned scientists published a statement on the journal Lancet in February refuting the conspiracy theory that the virus is artificially made.

Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute in Sweden, and other researchers published a paper on the origin of the virus in Nature Medicine in mid-March. The paper pointed out that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.

In an interview with Faces of Peace, Gunnar Jeremias, professor at the University of Hamburg in Germany, also refuted such conspiracy theory and said even the best laboratory in the world could not create this virus out of thin air.

Rumor 2: The SARS-CoV-2 was released as the result of lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Fact: The Wuhan Institute of Virology has nothing to do with the virus' origin.

Established in 1956, the institute is the top virology research agency in China and home to Asia's highest-level biosafety lab. The institute's P4 biosecurity lab can handle the deadliest pathogens in the world. The laboratory is about 30 kilometers away from the center of Wuhan. It is impossible for the virus to leak from such a high-security laboratory, said Yuan Zhiming, a researcher at Wuhan Institute of Virology, in an interview with CGTN on April 18. He said there is no way the virus could have originated from the institute. Before accepting the first batch of test samples of COVID-19 patients on Dec 30, the institute's labs did not have the novel coronavirus. As of now, no one in the institute has contracted COVID-19. It is understandable that people would have speculation about the institute, he said. But if some people try to deliberately mislead the public, their behavior is repugnant. 

EcoHealth Alliance is a non-profit organization based in New York. The chairman of the alliance, Peter Daszak, is responsible for studying emerging infectious diseases worldwide and has been cooperating with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for 15 years. In an interview with the American news website DemocracyNow on April 16, Dashyak said that the claim that the novel coronavirus escaped from the laboratory was pure nonsense. There is no virus cultivation related to the new coronavirus in the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, therefore the so-called laboratory leak is impossible.

American journalists Max Blumenthal and Ajit Singh wrote a report on the Grayzone on April 20 that the conspiracy theory about the virus escaping from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology is Trump administration's weapon of false information. It recalls the successful disinformation campaign launched by neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. Although such weapons of mass destruction were never found, the US used them as excuses to invade Iraq nonetheless.