Twitter suspends account of virologist who said coronavirus came from lab

Beijing: Last week, Chinese virologist Dr Li-Meng Yan, made a sensational claim, accusing China of not taking proper precautions to contain the spread of coronavirus, and offered scientific proof that COVID-19 is lab-made in Wuhan.

However, on Tuesday, microblogging site Twitter suspended her account claiming the account violated the “Twitter rules”. Her Twitter account remains inactive with a message reading: ‘Account suspended. Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules.’

The microblogging site had earlier this year announced that the social media platform will start labelling the tweets that could lead to spreading misleading information on sensitive and important topics.

However, Twitter has not commented on the suspension of Yan’s account.

In a video interview, Dr. Li-Meng Yan had claimed that she has scientific proof regarding the virus origin. She also stressed that when she had alerted the Chinese authorities of the impending danger due to the virus, they did not pay heed to her warnings.

“This virus is not from nature. The genome sequence is like a human finger print. So based on this you can identify these things. I use the evidence … to tell people why this has come from the lab in China, why they are the only ones who made it,” WION quoted Dr. Yan as saying.

Yan is currently in the US and has been researching on the virus since the last year. She said she was being threatened by the authorities in China, so, she had to flee to the US following safety concerns.