Without even knowing the ins and outs of the project to install a P3 classified research laboratory in Andorra, without being familiar with Andorran political life which, like elsewhere, has its share of rivalries and pitfalls, public opinion is already suspicious, even worried at the mere mention of such an initiative at the heart of Pyrenees. It is because since March 2020 and the arrival of the coronavirus responsible for this Covid-19 epidemic which has brought the world to its knees, public opinion has been interested in the way in which viruses are studied in laboratories and is passionate about the Wuhan P4 laboratory; this Chinese laboratory at the heart of the news in recent days with the return of the hypothesis, for the time being denied, that the coronavirus has “escaped” from its walls at the end of 2019.
Admittedly, the Andorran project concerns a laboratory of lower classification, P3, which studies only viruses for which there are health measures or treatment.. Admittedly, there are many laboratories of this type, including in our region, in CHUs, but the feeling of danger persists in public opinion. And it is not the alert that an expert has just issued this week that will dispel this feeling: Colonel Hamish of Bretton-Gordon has just alerted the leaders of the G7 countries to the insufficient security in the P3 laboratories which are around 3,000 in the world …
To reassure public opinion, increasingly bombarded since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic by fake news and conspiracy theses, there is only one solution: transparency on the means, the stakes, the financing, the risks also and the scientific and medical research objectives.
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