French Study Suggests Lab Origin for COVID-19, Citing Accidental Release

Contrary to rumors that claim the creation of a biological weapon, Covid-19 was a laboratory error that occurred during an experiment that went wrong on the mutation of the virus, says Jacques Van Helden, professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Aix-Marseille on Europe1.

For this scientist, also a signatory of the journal that published the study, this "experiment aims to increase the virulence or pathogenicity of a strain in order to understand these mechanisms and, possibly, to prevent mutations that can occur in the natural environment." According to him, these strains can become contagious if they end up outside the laboratories.

According to the scientist, the virus would have been reproduced in the laboratory on cells or animals in order to understand how it is capable of crossing the species barrier.