$20 trillion US lawsuit filed against China over coronavirus outbreak

A US$20 trillion lawsuit has been filed in the US against the Chinese government, seeking compensation for damages caused by the new coronavirus outbreak.

A group of US citizens and businesses filed the lawsuit at a federal district court in the state of Florida on March 12.

The plaintiffs argue that they are suffering huge damages resulting from the Chinese government's mishandling of the outbreak.

A spokesperson at the Berman Law Group representing the plaintiffs says the suit was brought by about 1,000 plaintiffs from across the US, including individuals infected with the virus and large companies severely affected by the outbreak.

The spokesperson said one of the factors behind the lawsuit were remarks by a Chinese foreign ministry official who said the coronavirus could have been brought into China by the US military.

Similar class action lawsuits have been filed in the states of Texas and Nevada against the Chinese government as the coronavirus continues to spread across the US.

However, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) prevents Americans from suing other countries except under specific exceptions. Yale University law professor Stephen Carte wrote in a Bloomberg column that the Florida suit's claims don't fall under the FSIA exceptions.

Speaking at a news conference at the White House on Sunday, President Donald Trump conceded the deaths in the United States from coronavirus could reach 100,000 or more.

The new coronavirus, which began in Wuhan, China, has infected people in most countries around the world.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, the origin of virus has been widely discussed online, and conspiracy theories around it have also emerged endlessly.

Previous scientific studies have already suggested that virus, which causes COVID-19, originated through natural processes.

Some analysts say there is increasing evidence that the global coronavirus pandemic is a US biological warfare against other nations.

Iranian scientists and intelligence experts are examining the possibility of the coronavirus being a biological warfare waged against the Iranian people.

US scientists refute Wuhan as origin of novel coronavirus

The novel coronavirus did not originate from a seafood market in central China

In a recent interview with ABC news, Dr. Robert Garry, a professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana, pointed out that it's a misconception to believe the virus originated at a seafood market in Wuhan, China.

"Our analyses, and others too, point to an earlier origin than that," Garry said, "There were definitely cases there, but that wasn't the origin of the virus."

A Pakistani scientist specializing in organic chemistry has said that the highly contagious novel coronavirus did not necessarily emerge naturally through mutation but rather may have been produced in a laboratory in the United States as a bioweapon.

Professor Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, who has a Ph.D and Sc.D. in organic chemistry from King's College, Cambridge, made the remarks in an interview on Sunday when asked about the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed about 35,000 people and infected more than 737,000 across the world.

When asked whether the novel coronavirus is a bio-weapon, Dr. Rahman said, “It is possible that an existing virus has been syntactically modified and developed into a bio-weapon.”

“There is some evidence that the United States was working on a bio-weapon in a laboratory. The laboratory was closed following a leakage. It was a military laboratory,” added Rahman, who is also the chairman of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s National Task Force on Science and Technology.

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