I do not think China would release an engineered germ in the same town where they made it.

I have a friend who married a woman from Wuhan, and I hear that her relatives went through hell there.

That is NOT to say China did not engineer the germ. That seems possible and plausible. They need to kill off all the natives in Africa if they want that contenant.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. -Ernest Hemingway
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.-- Edward John Phelps