In a 263-page document, written by People's Liberation Army scientists and senior Chinese public health officials and obtained by the US State Department during its investigation into the origins of COVID-19, PLA scientists note how a sudden surge of patients requiring hospitalization during a bioweapon attack "could cause the enemy's medical system to collapse," according to The Weekend Australian (a subsidiary of News Corp).

It suggests that SARS coronaviruses could herald a "new era of genetic weapons," and noted that they can be "artificially manipulated into an emerging human ­disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before."