The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office on Wednesday directed the country’s Federal Service that supervises communications, Roskomnadzo, to block online videos alleging that the novel coronavirus is a man-made bio-weapon.
The Prosecutor General's Office on Wednesday had said that they had discovered videos claiming that the novel coronavirus is a manmade bioweapon on YouTube as well as Russian social networking website Odnoklassniki.
These videos claimed that the coronavirus “is a genetically modified biological weapon, artificially created to chip the population and establish a global world order, to destroy people by infection under the guise of vaccination,” and that one can predict the spread of coronavirus by “numerological calculations.”
Shooting down online conspiracy theories about the coronavirus’ manmade origins as fake, the office had released a statement directing Roskomnadzo to delete said videos.
“Neither the World Health Organization (WHO), nor the Government of the Russian Federation, nor other official authorities of the Russian Federation confirmed information on the artificial production of coronavirus infection,” read the official statement.
The Prosecutor General’s Office also dismissed fake online ads claiming that “a vaccine against coronavirus was found in Kazakhstan.” So far, no special drugs have been discovered to treat Covid-19, it had said.
The origin of the virus has been the focus of multiple claims and conspiracy theory. The United States President Donald Trump and United States (US) Secretary Mike Pompeo on multiple occasions have claimed that the virus was manufactured in a lab in Wuhan.
However, the US intelligence community in an official statement last week had said that the virus was of natural origin. The WHO as well on multiple occasions have reiterated that the virus is of natural origin according to the evidence found so far.
“We have listened again and again to numerous scientists who have looked at the sequence and looked at the virus, and we are assured that this virus is natural in origin,” Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program had said at a press briefing last week.
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.