Derrick Rossi has just been awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research, but that did not make him forget about the fight against the coronavirus.
Rossi, one of the Canadian founders of the Moderna laboratory that developed one of the vaccines against COVID-19, is blunt about the origin of the pandemic and does not hesitate to say that it originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
Contrary to what the Chinese government claims, trying to maintain the hypothesis of a natural transmission of Covid-19, the established biologist affirms that there are no indications that prove that story which Beijing is trying to impose.
“We have no evidence in any way, but this virus is so different from that of bats that it seems unlikely to me that it was a natural leap,” says Rossi in dialogue with the Spanish newspaper El Comercio.
“It is a fact that a laboratory in Wuhan worked with him and I am convinced that he came out of there, that he escaped them. I don’t think it was deliberate, they were just studying it and there was an accident. China denies it, of course, but it is the explanation that I see as the most logical,” noted the scientist.
Rossi also thinks it probable that humanity will encounter new pandemics in the future, despite the fact that politicians were not prepared for this one that took them by surprise. “Although we quickly forget about others that existed, such as the 1918 flu, especially politicians, I believe that this pandemic has been something exceptional, although there is no doubt that there will be more pathogens that jump to humans and cause disease. I hope we are more prepared for it. And there will be technologies that we still do not know that will help us,” he underlined.
When asked by the Spanish journalists about the effectiveness of the vaccines to put an end to the pandemic, Rossi said that it is likely that taking into account the mutation that the viruses experience, it is necessary to vaccinate regularly.
“It is difficult to know. It may be that the vaccine makes us generate a natural immunity and it is not necessary, but it can also happen that the virus changes or becomes endemic, like the flu, and we have to get vaccinated every one or two years,” he said.
