Numerous reports in the Arab press have accused the US and Israel of being behind the creation and spread of the deadly coronavirus as part of an economic and psychological war against China, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported.

One report in the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan claimed that it was no coincidence that the coronavirus was absent from the US and Israel, though this is despite America having 12 confirmed cases at the time of writing.

“A ‘wonder’ virus was discovered yesterday in China; tomorrow it will be discovered in Egypt, but it will not be discovered either today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow in the US or Israel, nor in poor countries such as Burundi or the Comoro Islands,” the report said.

It also went on to accuse the US and Israel of being behind other outbreaks over the past several years in China and in the Arab world.

“As soon as Egypt announced, a few years ago, that it would rely on poultry [raised in the country], and that it would even export [poultry] abroad – that is, that it no longer needed poultry from the US, France, and so on – [suddenly] there appeared, from underneath the ground, the avian flu virus… with the aim of nipping [Egypt’s economic] awakening in the bud,” the report said.

“Even before this, the same thing was done in China… when in 2003 [the country] announced that it had the [world’s] largest dollar reserves [and] they [the Americans] introduced coronavirus’ cousin, SARS, into [the country].

“At the beginning of February, Syrian daily newspaper Al-Thawra also claimed the coronavirus and other outbreaks were part of a US-China war.

“From Ebola, Zika, SARS, avian flu and swine flu, through anthrax and mad cow disease to the corona[virus] – [all these] deadly viruses were manufactured by the US and threaten to annihilate the peoples of the world,” the report alleged. “[The US] has turned biological warfare into a new type of war, by means of which it intends to change the rules of play and shift the conflict with the peoples [of the world] away from the conventional path.”

A report on the Egyptian news site Vetogate.com built on this theory even more, specifying why Wuhan was supposedly chosen as the epicenter of the current outbreak.

“American factories are the first to manufacture every kind of virus and bacteria, from the virulent smallpox virus and the bubonic plague virus to all the viruses we saw in the recent years, such as mad cow disease and swine flu,” the site claimed. “Wuhan, the city that has now been struck by the corona[virus], is an industrial town, but it is nevertheless the eighth-richest city in China after Shanghai.

“Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin and Hong Kong, are the country’s major cities. [Wuhan’s] place at the bottom of the list [of China’s major cities] is what makes it a suitable [place] for an American crime… for it is not a focus of attention, and the level of healthcare there is surely lower than in the larger and more important cities.” The news site adds that there is a theorized economic motivation for the outbreak, as the supposed masterminds behind it will reap the billions of dollars spent by China on emergency treatments and medicines, “which, by the way, will be manufactured by an Israeli company.

“Over 37,000 people around the world have been infected with the coronavirus as the outbreak continues to spread. The current death toll is over 800 people.