A December 2, 2020 report on Russian state-media platform RT includes a misleading claim that COVID-19 was present in the United States before China, based on a paper about serologic testing of US blood donations between December 2019 and January 2020 in the Oxford Academic medical journal.
While the findings of the Oxford Academic “suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may have been introduced into the United States prior to January 19, 2020,” the date that the first cases in China, outside of Wuhan were reported.
The RT headline suggests that COVID may have first infected people in the United States, which would support earlier Russian and Chinese disinformation about the origins of the COVID virus.
The RT story falsely suggests that the COVID may have been circulating in the US “weeks before the Chinese authorities announced the infection in the city of Wuhan.” Although “patient zero” has not been identified, the first confirmed case of COVID was traced back to November 19, 2019 in China.
The RT story has been shared on Twitter by a Russian diplomat as well as accounts that amplify far-left and far-right conspiracy theories.
In March 2020, Chinese diplomats promoted a similar disinformation narrative which was spread by Canada’s Global Research, a platform that was recently identified by the US State Department’s Global Engagement Center as a part of the Russian disinformation ecosystem.
