A leading Russian microbiologist has claimed that the novel coronavirus is the outcome of โcrazyโ experiments conducted by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Coronavirus originated in Chinas Wuhan city in December last year.
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In an interview to Russian daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, translated in a report by the UK-based Daily Mail, noted scientist Professor Peter Chumakov said, โThey did absolutely crazy things, in my opinion.โ
He said the Chinese scientists created โvariants of the virus without malicious intentโ, possibly aiming for an HIV vaccine.
The statement comes even as Russian President Vladimir Putinโs government has been warning against conspiracy theories which claim that coronavirus is laboratory-engineered.
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Chief researcher at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, Chumakov in the interview, however, said that the picture of the possible creation of the current coronavirus is slowly emerging.
Scientists at the Wuhan Laboratory, he said, have been actively involved in the development of various coronavirus variants for over 10 years.
โMoreover, they did this, supposedly not with the aim of creating pathogenic variants, but to study their pathogenicity,โ he said.
According to the microbiologist, there are โseveral inserts, that is, substitutions of the natural sequence of the genome, which gave it special properties.โ
โFor example, inserts in the genome, which gave the virus the ability to infect human cells. Now all this has been analysedโฆ The Chinese and Americans who worked with them published all their works in the open (scientific) press,โ Chumakov said.
However, the academic, who is also connected to Russiaโs Federal Research Centre for Research and Development of Immunobiological Preparations, said it was too early to blame anyone.
After an investigation is initiated, new rules will be developed that regulate the work with the genomes of such dangerous viruses, he said.
Earlier, Veronika Skvortsova, head of Russiaโs Federal Medical-Biological Agency (FMBA), and Putinโs ex-health minister, was asked on Russiaโs Channel One if the pandemic virus could be manmade.