Pasteur Institute debunks rumours of having invented COVID-19

Muscat: The Pasteur Institute, a non-profit foundation located in France, has dismissed rumours on social media, attributing the invention of the novel coronavirus (NCov-19) to the institute.

In a post on its official Facebook page, Professor Olivier Schwartz, the Director of Virus and Immunity Research at the institute, explains that the institute was in no way responsible for inventing the new coronavirus. In January this year, the Institute had announced in a statement that it had managed to isolate strains of the coronavirus 2019-NCOV, responsible for COVID-19.

"As well as sequencing the whole genome of coronavirus 2019-nCoV, the Institut Pasteur continued to work on the samples taken from the first confirmed cases. The Institut Pasteur's scientists now have access to the virus responsible for the infection. The isolation of the virus paves the way for new diagnostic, therapeutic and prophylactic approaches," the statement said.

On Friday, the Professor Schwartz explained in the video that the institute was in no way responsible for 'inventing' the virus but was only working towards isolating it in order to find a cure.