No! Japanese Nobel Laureate Tasuku Honjo didn’t claim the Novel Coronavirus was made in a lab in Wuhan. Here’s the truth…

A new strain Coronavirus which caused this pandemic has affected more than 3 million people around the world and killed more than two hundred thousand people to date according to worldsmeter.info.

Wuhan Bio-safety Laboratory located in Wuhan, where the outbreak of this pandemic started, was one of the most highly discussed topics by international observers soon after the outbreak. And the news about the lab has been widely shared among social media users.

In this scenario, a viral WhatsApp forward saying Japanese Nobel Laureate Professor Tasuku Honjo has claimed while addressing the media that Coronavirus was “unnatural” and manufactured in Wuhan laboratory where he has worked for 4 years is getting widely shared. The claim has also been translated into Burmese and is spreading among Burmese language Facebook users.

The following is an extract from viral post in Burmese language -“အကယ်၍သာ ၎င်းသည်သဘာဝအတိုင်းဖြစ်ပေါ်လာသည်ဆိုပါက ကမ္ဘာတစ်ခုလုံးကိုဆိုးဆိုးရွားရွားထိခိုက်လိမ့် မည်မဟုတ်ပါ။ဘာကြောင့်လဲဆိုတော့ နိုင်ငံများတွင် အပူချိန်များသည် ကွဲပြားခြားနားသောကြောင့် ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ အကယ်၍သာ ၎င်းဗိုင်းရပ်စ်သည် သဘာဝအလျှောက်ဖြစ်ပေါ်လာပါက တရုတ်နိုင်ငံနှင့်အပူချိန်တူသော နိုင်ငံများ ကိုသာ ထိခိုက်ပေလိမ့်မည်။ ၎င်းအစား ဆွစ်ဇာလန်နိုင်ငံကဲ့သို့သော နိုင်ငံတစ်နိုင်ငံတွင်ပျံ့နှံ့နေသည်၊ သဲကန္တာရ ဒေသများတွင်ပျံ့နှံ့နေသည်။ ၎င်းသည်သဘာဝအလျှောက်ဖြစ်ပေါ်ခဲ့လျှင် ၎င်းသည်အအေးခန်းများ တွင်ပျံ့နှံ့သွား သော်လည်းပူသောနေရာများတွင်သေဆုံးသွားပေမည်။ကျွန်တော်သည်နှစ်ပေါင်း 40ကြာသည့်တိုင်အောင် တိရိစ္ဆာန်များနှင့်ဗိုင်းရပ်စ်များအပေါ်သုတေသနပြုခဲ့ပြီးပါပြီ။ ဒါဟာ သဘာဝမဟုတ်ပါဘူး။ ၎င်းဗိုင်းရပ်စ်သည် ဓာတ်ခွဲခန်းမှထုတ်လုပ်ထားပြီး လူများဖန်တီးလိုက်သောဗိုင်းရပ်စ်အတုသာလျှင် ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ကျွန်တော်သည် တရုတ်နိုင်ငံရှိ Wuhan ဓာတ်ခွဲခန်းတွင် ၄ နှစ်ကြာအောင် အလုပ်လုပ်ခဲ့ပါသည်။” – translating into English claiming the same as message forwarded in Whatsapp. Below is a screenshot of post by Facebook user “Dagu Mg”.

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Another Facebook user “Sein Wai Thwint” also shared the post with the same narrative.

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Fact Check

At first, we turned to Google and tried a number of keywords searches including “tasuku honjo”, “tasuku honjo wuhan laboratory” or “tasuku honjo coronavirus unnatural”. Results for all of those keywords searches gave no credible reports from reputed mainstream media websites across the globe. Below is a screenshot of results from keywords search “tasuku honjo”.

Rather we can see in the screenshot given above that some fact checking organization have debunked these claims.

Professor Tasuku Honjo got Nobel prize for Medicine in 2018 along with Professor James P. Allison from the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas according to Nobelprize.org.

Professor Tasuku Honjo had spoken to Nobelprize.org in an interview after receiving the Nobel prize. Here, we see his specializations and his work is mostly in cancer therapy, genomic, immunology- which is quite different from virology.

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Professor Tasuku Honjo has worked at Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study (KUIAS) as a deputy director-general and distinguished professor according to Kyoto University website.

Department of Immunology and Genomic Medicine Kyoto University, Faculty of Medicine Kyoto where Professor Tasuku Honjo has worked as an executive member since 2006 posted his curriculum vitae available on their website, and do not include anything related to Wuhan Laboratory in China.

Kyoto University

Kyoto University also issued a statement on their website on April 27, 2020 in which Professor Tasuku Honjo has refuted the claims circulated on social media.

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Conclusion

According to above investigations, we found that there is no evidence Professor Tasuku Honjo has spoken to media recently about Coronavirus or he worked for Wuhan Laboratory in China. Above all, the professor himself has refuted making any such statement. Therefore, the viral claims related to Tasuku Honjo and novel coronavirus are false.