Former United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s chief adviser on China has sought to reignite the debate over Beijing’s role in spreading the novel coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic.

Miles Maochun Yu, who served as Pompeo’s principal China policy and planning adviser under Donald Trump’s administration, accused the central authorities in Beijing of manufacturing the virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a controversial and contentious claim dismissed by Chinese health authorities as well as by scientists around the world.

In an interview with U.S. publicly funded broadcaster Voice of America, Yu pointed to the fact that China’s hardline leader Xi Jinping included biological safety as part of the national security system, saying that Xi would not have adopted the measure if the country did not have shortcomings in biological research.

Beijing had tried to use a recent investigative team from the World Health Organization to prove that the virus came from an animal host, the 58-year-old said, accusing the international body of being “kidnapped” by China.

Yu and Pompeo last week accused the country of obsessing over viruses but failing to ensure biosecurity. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the duo said that the world was paying a high price for China’s lapses.

China has previously called on countries around the world to work together to study the origins of the virus.

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