As part of the Fête de la Science, Virginie Courtier gave a lecture on Tuesday 5 October on “The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus”.
About 50 years ago, the ancestor of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which is responsible for COVID-19, was circulating in its natural state in bat populations. But what has happened in recent years to lead to a pandemic virus? Is it possible that this virus is linked to a laboratory accident? We will take stock of what we know and what we do not know about the origins of this virus.
Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo is currently a research director at the CNRS. With her research team at the Institut Jacques Monod, she studies the mechanisms involved in the evolution of species, in order to better understand our origins and the future of living species. She is behind the Adios Corona initiative (www.adioscorona.org), a website run by an international group of around 20 volunteer researchers, which aims to disseminate and explain the meaning of collective good practices during the COVID-19 epidemic. Since July 2020, it has also been studying the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the pandemic.
Watch the conference on video
