Amid lockdown in several countries due to COVID-19 pandemic that originated in China’s Wuhan, an astonishing claim by a French Nobel laureate has stirred controversy.
Scientist Luc Montagnier has claimed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from a lab, and is the outcome of an attempt to manufacture a vaccine against the AIDS virus.
He claimed that there is a presence of elements of HIV in the genome of the coronavirus and even elements of the ‘germ of malaria’ are highly suspected, in an interview with French CNews channel and during a podcast interview by Pourquoi Docteur.
Professor Montagnier is one of the scientists who co-discovered HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus).
He was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the identification of the AIDS virus, with his colleague professor Françoise Barre-Sinoussi.
‘The Wuhan city laboratory has specialised in these coronaviruses since the early 2000s. They have expertise in this area,’ he said, reported Asian Times.
US President Donald Trump last week acknowledged Fox News report that the novel coronavirus may have been accidentally leaked by an intern working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
The Fox News, in an exclusive report, based on unnamed sources has claimed that though the virus is a naturally occurring strain among bats and not a bioweapon, it was being studied in Wuhan laboratory.
The initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, the news channel said, adding that the ‘patient zero’ worked at the laboratory. The lab employee was accidentally infected before spreading the disease among the common people outside the lab in Wuhan city.
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