Philippine influencers have launched an online petition, urging the international community to seriously look into the role of the Fort Detrick laboratory in the United States in the global spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Herman Laurel, a columnist for social news website Sovereign P.H., said the World Health Organization (WHO) should probe the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

"This biological laboratory suffered a laboratory incident in July 2019, causing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to shut down the facility in August 2019 due to 'serious safety violations,'" Laurel said.

He said the facility was ordered closed after it disposed of "dangerous materials believed to have caused strange 'vaping sickness' and the 'strange flu' in the U.S. at that time."

Laurel added there are plenty of serious and credible reports raised by experts of different countries pointing to the COVID-19 incidences in their territories much earlier than the end of 2019.

"The logical direction is to widen the search net as much as possible to get to the bottom of where the so-called patient zero originated," said the petition, adding that "To this day, Fort Detrick remains too dangerous a mystery to be ignored by WHO experts."

The online campaign, which has amassed hundreds of signatures so far, also calls on "certain countries" to stop politicizing COVID-19.

"We, therefore, affix our marks to this appeal, hopeful that in joining millions around the globe seeking a common ground to allow science, not politics and not racism, to rule," said the petition.

Former Philippine diplomat to Washington and book author Adolfo Paglinawan said that politicizing the virus "leads to an information war."

Paglinawan warned the "info-demics are moving at a get-go to preempt the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," adding that there is "no vaccine for a virus called racism."

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