Expert rebuts engineered virus theory

BEIJING: A US medical scientist has refuted the theory that the novel coronavirus was engineered in a lab, in a video interview with the American Medical Association.

When asked about the lab origin theory, Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Centre for vaccine development in Houston said, “That didn’t make any sense to me.”Covid-19 is the third major coronovirus epidemic in the 21st century, following SARS in 2002 and MERS in 2012.

When MERS struck about 10 years ago, Hotez had expected a third coronovirus epidemic.

“These viruses are emerging on a regular basis,” he said.

This prediction convinced him to shift his focus from parasitic disease vaccines to coronavirus vaccines.

“We’ve been working on coronavirus vaccines for 10 years,” he said. — China Daily/ANN