The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, is causing wide anger for its reopening in April regardless of the US and global citizens' opposition after months of shutdown for reported "structural defects."

The public doubts the possible link between the institute and a series of deadly disease outbreaks in this country, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

More suspicion and blame on USAMRIID occurred when an unprecedented e-cigarette or vaping product use associated lung injury (EVALI) broke out in its surrounding areas in August 2019.

According to researchers who examined samples of lung tissue from 17 EVALI patients, all the samples implied the people "had been exposed to toxic chemicals," reported the New York Times in October.

Days before the institution's temporary shutdown in 2019, a respiratory illness was reported on June 30 at a community one hour's drive away. The Greenspring Retirement Community in Fairfax County, Virginia, had had 63 infected cases of the disease and three deaths by July 15, said local health authorities.

In an email response to the Global Times on Friday, Fairfax County Health Department said there had been an established etiology for the outbreak of the illness. "Testing of specimens collected showed several bacteria, including Haemophilus influenzae (H. flu) and rhinovirus," it wrote, saying these were "the cause of the common cold."

Nonetheless, this epidemic has recently led to speculation on its probable relevance to USAMRIID on US social media aimed at the COVID-19 pandemic. A Twitter user named "The Paper" posted in March that his bet of the virus escaping from the institute was "a 50 percent or higher chance."