More on Covid-19

NEW DELHI: Creating a scientific firestorm across the world, French virologist and medicine Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier has claimed that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that led to the global pandemic, is “man-made” as it’s the result of an attempt to manufacture a vaccine against the AIDS virus in a Chinese laboratory.Interviewed on a French news channel, the co-discoverer of the AIDS virus who bagged the 2008 Nobel award in medicine along with other two other scientists alleged the “presence of elements of HIV and germ of malaria in the genome of coronavirus is highly suspect and the characteristics of the virus could not have arisen naturally”. Montagnier alleged that an “industrial” accident was said to have taken place in the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory , which specialises in these coronaviruses since early 2000s.His allegation has come at a time when the US has started a probe into such reports of virus “leak”. In fact, US President Donald Trump had a few days ago said, “More and more, we’re hearing the story” and that the US was “doing a very thorough investigation”. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “We’re doing a full investigation of everything we can to learn how it is the case that this virus got away, got out into the world and now has created so much tragedy — so much death — here in the US and all around the world.” He said the US knew that the Wuhan lab “contained highly contagious materials”.Montagnier, however, is a controversial figure as he had earlier published two controversial research studies — electromagnetic waves emitted by DNA (DNA teleportation) and on the benefits of papaya in AIDS or Parkinson cure — that attracted criticism from a section of the scientific community.Another French virologist Étienne Simon-Lorière of the Institut Pasteur in Paris, however, rubbished Montagnier’s claims. “That (His claims) does not make sense. These are very small elements that we find in other viruses of the same family, other coronaviruses in nature,” Étienne told AFP.The theory that the Covid-19 originated from genetic manipulation has been circulating in social media for quite some time. However, China has refuted allegations that the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian cited the World Health Organisation chief and other unidentified medical experts as saying that there was no evidence that transmission began from the laboratory and there was “no scientific basis” for such claims.