SCIENTISTS have shut down conspiracist claims that the coronavirus - which has killed just under 9,000 people - is a bioweapon.

Lijian Zhao, a spokesperson and deputy director-general at the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Information Department tweeted that it “might be the US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan”.

While the former president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, tweeted: "It is clear to the world that the mutated coronavirus was produced in a lab, manufactured by the warfare stock houses of biological war belonging to world powers & that it constitutes a threat on humanity more destructive than the other weapons that target humanity."

But a team of researches have now published a report in the respected journal Nature Medicine exploring the origins of SARS-CoV-2, another name for the virus which causes Covid-19, The Herald reports.

“By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes,” said Kristian Andersen, PhD, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research and corresponding author on the paper.

The team analysed the molecular structure of the virus - which is its "backbone" - suggesting that is cannot be an artificial creation because its structure “differed substantially from those of already known coronaviruses and mostly resembled related viruses found in bats and pangolins”.

The researchers suggested that anyone looking to create a new coronavirus and use it as a bioweapon would probably have built it using the backbone of a virus that has already killed humans.

"Its distinct backbone rules out laboratory manipulation as a potential origin for SARS-CoV-2,” Dr Andersen added.

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However, we still do not know exactly how the coronavirus came into being.

It may have "jumped" into a human from a pangolin, which is a mammal resembling an armadillo or even bats.

Previous coronavirus outbreaks were sparked by humans who had close contact with civets and camels..

The virus has killed two people in Wales, and infected 149, but Wales’ chief medical officer Dr Frank Atherton said the number of actual cases “could be in the thousands”.

Josie Golding, PhD, epidemics lead at the Wellcome Trust, said the findings are “crucially important to bring an evidence-based view to the rumours that have been circulating about the origins of the virus".

“They conclude that the virus is the product of natural evolution, ending any speculation about deliberate genetic engineering," she added.