Berlin (dpa -AfX) – The Berlin virologist Christian Drosten has commented on the findings of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) on the corporation of the Coronavirus. The summary of the results impressed him, explained the director of the Charité Institute for Virology in Berlin, which was part of a round of experts requested by the Chancellery. However, the source data was not made accessible to the circle of scientists. “I therefore cannot make a scientific judgment due to a lack of data access.” In addition, all members of the round are subject to a confidentiality obligation.
From the point of view of science and the public, it may be unsatisfactory not to get a clear assessment. But: “For an evaluation according to scientific standards, the source data would have to be available and published so that the analyzes are understandable and reproducible for other scientists.” Without this approval, the knowledge communicated at the scientific level cannot be used.
Like other researchers and the World Health Organization (WHO), he repeatedly pointed out that all the data and information available should be made accessible to the virus leap of a scientific evaluation. In the previous public information situation, there is a much predominant probability of a natural origin, “and so it was always expressed by me: for none of the origin hypotheses there is evidence, but there is a significant weighting of the likelihood”.
As the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” and other media reported, the BND had evidence of the so -called laboratory thesis, which should be evaluated by an expert round in the past few months. According to this thesis, the Sars-Cov-2 virus comes from a Chinese organic laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where research is carried out on Coronaviruses. The second theory is that the virus, like that of the Sars epidemic from 2002/2003, had a natural origin.
Drosten still considers a natural origin of Sars-Cov-2 to be likely, as he only said in January the newspaper “Taz”
– “And almost all scientists do that with the
The topic is involved “. Due to the currently available – albeit weak – data situation, it can be assumed that the transfer to humans via intermediate hosts, for example on animal farms, also said Fabian Leendertz, director of the Helmholtz Institute for One Health in Greifswald, the news agency dpa./KLL/DP/NAS