“We don’t see why the FBI favors this lead today.” While the mystery about the origins of Covid-19, responsible for the recent global pandemic, persists, the virologist Bruno Lina, a member of Covars (Committee for monitoring and anticipation of health risks), returned to the columns of the Parisian about the statements of the head of the FBI earlier in the week. In an interview granted to the American channel Fox News and released on Tuesday, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, took sides with the thesis of a leak from a Chinese laboratory.
“The FBI has believed for some time that the origin of the pandemic probably lies in a possible laboratory incident in Wuhan,” he said, before repeating that “we are talking about a possible leak from a laboratory under the authority of the Chinese state.” . ‘.
Animal origin, “most likely hypothesis”
For Bruno Lina, this hypothesis “has no scientific basis and, to date, we have no new elements that allow us to reopen this file.” “Unfortunately, we still don’t know where this virus came from,” the scientist continued, noting that “the most likely hypothesis” was an animal origin, “probably” via the bat.
“Certain coronaviruses circulating in [la chauve-souris] they closely resemble SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. It would have been transmitted to humans through another farm or wild animal, perhaps present in the market in Wuhan, China, where the first cases were identified”, explains the virologist.
In this other animal, the virus “was able to multiply” before “accumulating” and “stabilizing” “mutations that later allowed it to infect humans.”
If this hypothesis has not been proven either, it is raised by the scientific community because several other viruses have developed in this way. Like another type of coronavirus, Sras, “where the bat contaminated a civet, for example, which ate a fruit contaminated with its urine”, causing an epidemic between 2002 and 2003, mainly in China.
Accelerate scientific cooperation
Bruno Lina, however, does not categorically reject the lead favored by the FBI, due to the presence in Wuhan of a “high security laboratory”, which “worked on coronaviruses”.
“It is impossible to be certain that there was not an accidental leak. But if we weigh the two hypotheses, it is most likely that it is the natural origin and not the accidental origin ”, he affirms.
Since the start of the pandemic, the scientific community has considered it crucial to know the origins of this scourge in order to better combat it or even prevent a future pandemic. An approach made difficult by cooperation with China, which is stalling. Bruno Lina believes that “we have to stop hanging around and wasting everyone’s time because cooperation with China to determine the origin of the Covid is not taking place, and it will never take place”.
Especially since “what we experience with the Covid can happen again. Until we understand the transmission mechanism, it is impossible to say that we will do better next time.”
Source: BFM TV
