The Western mainstream media should stop shifting focus from their countries' own problems by sensationalizing the "Wuhan lab leak theory", a US writer told China Daily in a recent interview at a forum held by the Center for China and Globalization.

"This is very, very dangerous time. And in terms of the motivation for what we see with, I think, Western mainstream media, they keep focusing back to China in their interest and desire to blame China," Mario Cavolo, also a nonresident senior fellow of the Center for China and Globalization, told China Daily reporter Pan Yixuan.

Cavolo said the "Wuhan lab leak theory" is an example of information being broadly and aggressively disseminated in Western mainstream media.

Cavolo mentioned the World Health Organization did a thorough investigation that dismissed the theory and that scientific research institutions including the US National Institutes of Health had evidence that the novel coronavirus existed in other countries earlier than when the virus was identified in Wuhan.

Cavolo also pointed out that scientists around the world are cooperating to counter COVID-19 and that China needs to improve its narratives to blunt such rhetoric.