ST. PETERSBURG, June 4. /TASS/. The investigations into the origin of the coronavirus are underway and it is inappropriate to talk about any emerging theories until they have been completed, Russian Healthcare Minister Mikhail Murashko said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2021) on Friday.
"The investigations about the origin are underway, the finalized version will be voiced when it’s formulated, yet I think that in the current situation it is improper to support or not various opinions or investigations," he said at a session on fighting infections and future risks.
The health minister also noted that the fight against the pandemic in Russia is not over. "Internally, we still have the incidence and hotspots, so yes, we turned the situation around and are heading in a good, right direction. The speed of movement depends on each of us," he added.
Arguments about the origins of the virus
At the end of May, US President Joe Biden informed that the US intelligence at the moment did not possess sufficient information to assert what started the spread of the novel coronavirus — a human contact with an infected animal or a laboratory incident. The American leader tasked the intelligence community to double their efforts and study all available data to prepare a new report on this topic in 90 days.
On May 23, The Wall Street Journal, citing US intelligence data, asserted that at least three Chinese scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology went down with a serious disease in November 2019. This allegedly may support the theory on the artificial origin of the novel coronavirus. As Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian stated earlier, media reports that several of the institute’s scientists were treated at a hospital in November 2019, that is, before China’s authorities reported the emergence of the novel disease, are untrue.
In March, a report by an international group of experts was published on their visit to China in January-February in order to study the origins of the novel coronavirus. The specialists could not reach a definitive conclusion. According to the mission’s final document made public in Geneva, the most likely scenario is the transmission of the coronavirus between animals and then to humans, the least likely one is the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in laboratory conditions.