Several French scientists believe that the hypothesis of a virus that escaped from a laboratory cannot be totally swept aside when the question of the origin of Covid-19 is asked.

At the microphone of Europe 1, one of them talks about the risks associated with the manipulation of viral strains.

Since the start of the pandemic triggered by Covid-19, many questions remain about the origin of this new coronavirus.

After the thesis of transmission to humans by the pangolin, that of the virus that escaped from a laboratory had been raised.

Five French scientists nevertheless believe in an article published by the journal

Médecine / Science

 that the latter thesis remains probable, without falling into conspiracy.

This would not be the creation of biological weapons, but a potential laboratory error.

An error that could have occurred during an experiment on virus mutation, explains to Europe 1 Jacques Van Helden, professor of bioinformatics at the University of Aix-Marseille, and one of the signatories of this article.

"It is an experiment which aims to increase the virulence or the pathogenicity of a strain in order to understand these mechanisms and, possibly, to prevent the mutations which can occur in the natural environment", he explains.

"But this generates strains that can themselves become endemic, if they were to escape."

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Risks associated with studying viruses

This is called the benefit / risk balance.

And on this type of experiment very precisely, this famous scale is debated in the scientific community.

By making a virus evolve we understand it better, but we also make it more dangerous in the event that it escapes from the laboratory.

From there, many scenarios are possible: a contaminated staff member, a sample labeling error, an isolation problem, etc.

Such incidents have happened before, but without ever creating a pandemic.

What Jacques Van Helden explains today with several of his colleagues.

If the hypothesis of the laboratory error at the origin of the new coronavirus is not the most probable, however, nothing yet allows to rule it out.