Wuhan coronavirus predicted in Dean Koontz's 1981 novel 'The Eyes of Darkness'; 'Coincidence or prophecy?' asks Twitter

'The Eyes of Darkness' is a suspense thriller which focuses on a mother who sets out on a quest to find out if her son truly did die one year ago, or if he is still alive.

Eventually, she discovers that her son is being held captive at a military facility in China where he has been contaminated with man-made microorganisms created at the bioresearch lab.

An excerpt from the book which is making the rounds on social media goes like this: "It was around this time that a Chinese scientist named Li Chen moved to the United States while carrying a floppy disk of data from China's most important and dangerous new biological weapon of the past decade. They call it Wuhan-400 because it was developed in their RDNA laboratory just outside the city of Wuhan."

Needless to say, this holds a chilling resonance with real-life events, since the coronavirus epidemic literally broke out from China's Wuhan. Fringe conspiracy theorists have even claimed that the epidemic may be man-made, spread from a virology institute just outside of Wuhan.

In his novel, Koontz called the virus the "perfect weapon" because it only affects humans. It also cannot survive outside the human body for more than a minute and does not require an expensive decontamination process once it spreads through a population and those who contract it.

The Chinese military lab finds mention in chapter 39 of his book. It may be noted that Wuhan province - the epicentre of coronavirus outbreak - is one of the most affected regions of China.

The coincidence between the book's virus and the actual coronavirus outbreak is uncanny.

The death toll from China's coronavirus epidemic climbed to 1,886 on Tuesday (February 18, 2020) as 98 more people died while the total number of confirmed cases jumped to 72,436, officials said.

Of the new deaths, 93 were reported from Hubei Province, the epicenter of the virus, three from Henan, and one each from Hebei and Hunan said the National Health Commission. Hubei reported 1,807 new confirmed cases, taking the total number of such cases to 59,989 in the province. Another 1,432 new suspected cases were reported from the rest of China.

On Monday, 1,097 patients became seriously ill and 11,741 patients remained in severe condition, the commission said. Of the 41,957 patients hospitalised in Hubei, 9,117 were still in severe condition and another 1,853 in critical condition, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Meanwhile, Top World Health Organisation experts, including from the US, have joined the fight against the virus, called COVID-19, in China. China confirmed that the 12-member WHO team includes Americans, as sought by the US.