The assumption that the “omikron”-strain of coronavirus may have been created by biohackers, made Chumakov, head of the Cell Proliferation Laboratory of the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences.
“Biohacking is when people, in possession of some technology, do some things at their own risk and in their own mind that can have a huge impact on all of us”, – Chumakov said.
Doubts about the artificial origin of the strain were expressed by Vitaly Zverev, scientific director of the I.I. Mechnikov Research Institute of Vaccines and Sera.
“I don’t think it was created artificially, because such variants are formed in nature as well. There was already a similar case where a strain of coronavirus mutated in Japan, and as a result, the virus sort of destroyed itself”, – said the specialist.