A senior Russian virologist said on Tuesday that allegations that COVID-19 is man-made are not true.
Western experts claiming that the coronavirus could be the result of a lab accident cannot provide reliable evidence, Alexander Semyonov, deputy director of the Pasteur St. Petersburg Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, told Russia's Izvestia newspaper.
"It's like talking about astronautics with an advocate of flat Earth theory," he said.
Such allegations are to hide either the incompetence of a country's healthcare system or their negligence in fighting the epidemic, he added.
