Dean Koontz predicted coronavirus 40 years ago in his book 'The Eyes of Darkness'

New Delhi: An excerpt of the Novel "The Eyes of Darkness", a 1981 thriller by bestselling suspense author Dean Koontz is revolving around the social media which tells of a Chinese military lab that creates a virus as part of its biological weapons programme.

In chapter 39 of his book, Koontz writes that the lab is located in Wuhan, which lends the virus its name, Wuhan-400.

The lines from the book read: "They call the stuff 'Wuhan-400' because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside of the city of Wuhan, and it was the four-hundredth viable strain of man-made micro-organisms created at that centre."

Twitterati flooded social media with their reactions.

A user wrote, "Haha Infinite monkey theorem. Pick any event and chances are that some book written at some would have a similar plot. Conspiracy theory has no end."

Another wrote, "Sensational ... No doubt China had replaced Russia and USSR as the rogue country in Hollywood films and later James Bond movies."

A post read, "Intriguing for sure, hope the truth comes out."

A user remarked, "Okay if it is then it surely backfired on them!"

By the end of Sunday, a total of 1,770 people had died of the disease and 70,548 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection had been reported in 31 provincial-level regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in China.