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Affirmation
” The Institut Pasteur France created Covid. (…) RT (1)! and forward to all your contacts outside Twitter! »Wrote Michel, on Twitter, on 12 October.
The rumor that the Institut Pasteur invented the new coronavirus is still widely shared on social networks. At the origin of this false information: a 22-minute video released on March 17. In front of the camera, an Internet user claims that the virus was ” invented “in the lab. Summon a” biochemical attack “,” created by the French and the Institut Pasteur “.
To accredit his thesis he relies on a document: a patent filed in 2004 by the Institut Pasteur for ” a novel coronavirus strain associated with SARS (2) The video had been shared 96,000 times in less than 24 hours.
Because we are tempted to believe it
This patent (easily downloadable here), cited by the author of the video, existed, but it concerns a research conducted by the Institut Pasteur seventeen years ago on SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). An epidemic that hit Asia, then the world, causing over 8,000 cases and nearly 800 deaths.
SARS is also referred to as SARS-CoV-1, unlike the coronavirus currently in circulation called SARS-CoV-2.
Because this is wrong
” In 2004, the Institut Pasteur filed a new patent which did not concern the invention of a new virus. The patent, on the other hand, concerned the filing of sequences corresponding to the coronavirus number 1 that caused SARS … This coronavirus 1 is a cousin of 2, the one currently in circulation in France and in the world “Explains in a video Olivier Schwartz, head of the virus and immunity unit at the Institut Pasteur, who denounces” a totally imaginative and even harmful fake news “.
Institut Pasteur did not invent a virus (neither SARS-CoV-2 nor SARS-CoV-1), but in 2004 it created a vaccine candidate against the previous coronavirus. ” At that time, we had developed a measles vector-based candidate vaccine that went through the preclinical stages. It hasn’t been used in humans since the outbreak stopped on its own within a few weeks or months. », Continues Olivier Schwartz.
Researchers at the Institut Pasteur are now mobilized to find a vaccine against the new coronavirus. An effective molecule was also identified in the laboratory, already present in a drug on the market. “Human” tests must be performed.
What could he have warned?
False information tends to come back regularly. A simple Google search produces various articles that show that the information is false. The video was deleted from Youtube and Facebook.
The Senlis judge sentenced the author of the video for public defamation in early November. He was fined € 5,000 with suspension.
Let’s fight against fake news!
Attention, in these uncertain times there is a lot of false information and misconceptions, always check the information before spreading it. Do you have any questions or information you want us to check? Join the La Voix du Nord Solidire Facebook group: together we find the answers to your questions.
(1) RT stands for “retweet”. It is the act of republishing a message on Twitter to share it with its subscribers and increase its diffusion. (2) SARS in French or SARS in English.
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