Amidst warning from concerned authorities not to spread misguiding information about coronavirus through social media or any other form of media , financial market website Zero Hedge has published a controversial news story on its Twitter account . Twitter Inc. has banned financial market website Zero Hedge from the social media platform after it published an article linking a Chinese scientist to the outbreak of the fast-spreading coronavirus last week. Zero Hedge said it received a notification from Twitter on Friday, accusing it of violating Twitter’s “rules against abuse and harassment.” The move against the website came as the coronavirus has stoked a wave of anti-China sentiment around the globe. Hoaxes have spread widely online, promoted by conspiracy theorists and exacerbated by a dearth of information from the cordoned-off zone around China’s central city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began. Twitter confirmed to Reuters on Sunday Zero Hedge’s account on its platform had been permanently suspended for violating “platform manipulation policy.”

Zero Hedge said it initially thought the suspension was triggered by an article it published on its platform  about the makeup of the coronavirus. But it said it later learned Twitter had received a complaint from online news website BuzzFeed over a separate article. BuzzFeed said Zero Hedge had released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan in an article that made allegations about coronavirus having been concocted “as a bioweapon.” The article was titled “Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?” Last week, Twitter had said “those who engage in coordinated attempts to spread disinformation at scale about coronavirus issue will be removed from service.”

Zero Hedge, which covers mostly finance and economics, had more than 670,000 followers on Twitter as of its suspension.  As public health authorities work to halt the spread of coronavirus in the U.S., they’ll face two major obstacles: eroding trust in the media and medical system, and fake news.

In the era of fake news, when false information spreads at lightning speed across social media platforms and distrust in news is common, public health officials in the U.S. could face significant challenges keeping Americans safe if the illness were to begin spreading more rapidly.

“Whenever a threat like a potentially global infectious disease appears in the media, members of the public try to make sense of the nature of the threat,” said Adrian Bangerter, a professor at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland. “If trust is low, then there is a risk that alternative explanations like conspiracy theories may complicate efforts to contain disease spread.”