On August 11, Chinese state-run CCTV ran a report suggesting that American athletes participating in the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, China may have introduced COVID-19 to the country.
The games were held in October 2019 9,308 athletes from around the world, including more than 280 competitors and staff from the United States.
“During (the Military World Games 2019), five U.S. military contestants developed symptoms of infectious diseases such as fever, coughing and diarrhea and were rushed to Jinyintan Hospital, a famous infectious disease hospital in Wuhan,” the CCTV report claimed.
The CCTV report resurrected an old conspiracy theory – one that even Chinese media and a top health official have rejected.
To be sure, reports have surfaced that foreign athletes fell ill with COVID-19-like symptoms, prompting calls for an investigation from congressional Republicans to determine if the Military World Games 2019 was a "superspreader event."
But the case of those five individual athletes, none of whom were ever identified as U.S. citizens, was previously covered in Chinese media.
No evidence has ever been provided to support allegations that sick U.S. personnel at the games brought COVID-19 to Wuhan, seeding the global pandemic.
COVID-19 infections were first reported in Wuhan in December of 2019. The origins of the virus that causes the disease are uncertain, but that Chinese media and officials to blame the United States.
On February 23, 2020, Zhang Dingyu, director of Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, confirmed to that five foreign athletes suffering from malaria had received treatment at the hospital. He said the incident “had nothing to do with COVID-19.”
“This doesn’t even deserve debunking,” Zhang .
Zhang’s credibility within China is well-established.
In September 2020, Zhang "the People's Hero,” one of the highest honorary national titles, by Chinese President Xi Jinping for “his outstanding contributions to the country's fight against the COVID-19 epidemic.”
CCTV’s report claimed “the preliminary diagnosis was malaria,” but then noted that malaria “only exists in places with extremely poor hygiene conditions such as Africa.” The report questioned how U.S. soldiers could get it.
CCTV correctly noted malaria is “basically extinct” in China, malaria-free certification by the World Health Organization this past June.
As the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 had not yet been identified, the possibility the athletes were misdiagnosed remains. However, at the time that two of the five sick athletes were from Africa; the nationalities of the other athletes were not mentioned. Furthermore, no mention was made of American athletes.
The official website of Jinyintan Hospital on November 4, 2019 that local health officials had visited two athletes from Africa who were treated for malaria at the hospital. In one of the pictures, "Nigerian Army" is visible on the athlete's black and red jacket.
CCTV claimed, without providing any evidence, that the U.S. military scrambled planes to pick up the sick athletes and return them to the United States for treatment two days before others left the games.
But according to the , two of the athletes to the hospital staff and their treatment, seemingly contradicting the claim anyone was medically evacuated to another country. Medical records and passport information for the five athletes has never been presented.
On March 16, 2020, the Chinese Communist Party-run People’s Daily tweeted about Zhang Dingyu’s dismissal of the conspiracy theory.
Chinese social media users mockingly asked: “[D]id the People’s Daily just slap [foreign ministry spokesman] Zhao Lijian in the face?
Zhao had earlier spread the military games conspiracy theory, tweeting on March 12, 2020:
“CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
At that time, Maatje Benassi, a U.S. Army reservist who participated in the military games on the U.S. Armed Forces Cycling Team, was the target of online claims that she brought the virus to Wuhan.
Benassi said she had not experienced any symptoms of COVID-19.
Still, CCTV cited George Webb, who it described as “an investigative journalist,” in posting a video claiming that “an American athlete who participated in World Military Games in Wuhan in 2019 may have been the ‘patient zero’ that initially triggered the COVID-19 epidemic.”