Labs doing work on deadly pathogens lose their bugs. All the time. Here’s the latest episode, hidden from the public for 3 years

Thanks to Clayton Baker. I end with the US stats on losses and accidents involving deadly pathogens for 2023

ttps://amp.abc.net.au/article/104701198

Mr Nicholls said the breach was uncovered in August 2023. The lab has been unable to say whether the materials were removed or destroyed.

“It’s this part of the transfer of those materials that is causing concern,” Mr Nicholls said.

“They were transferred to a functioning freezer without the appropriate paperwork being completed.

“The materials may have been removed from that secure storage and lost, or otherwise unaccounted-for.”

There is no suggestion the samples were taken or stolen from the laboratory.

Viruses would ‘degrade rapidly’ [unless a thief brought along a freezer—Nass]

Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard said the breach in record keeping was serious, but the risk to the community was very low.

“It is important to note that these virus samples would degrade very rapidly outside a low-temperature freezer and become non-infectious,” he said.

“No Hendra or lyssavirus cases have been detected among humans in Queensland over the past five years, and there has been no report of hantavirus infections in humans ever in Australia.”

Hendra virus is a zoonotic disease, meaning it can spread from animals to people.

In 1994, the virus swept through racing stables in the Brisbane suburb of Hendra, killing a trainer and 13 horses.

Since then, there have been 66 known outbreaks across Australia, killing four people and dozens of horses.

The missing materials include 223 fragmented samples of lyssavirus, another potentially deadly disease similar to the rabies virus.

‘These things can’t happen’

Infectious Diseases expert Dr Paul Griffin said a breach in the storage of such dangerous viruses shouldn’t be possible.

“The systems and processes in laboratories handling such deadly pathogens are usually so robust and rigorous … these sort of things just can’t happen,” Dr Griffin said.

“So, it’s very disappointing to hear about the breach, especially to be finding out about it so far down the track.”

Dr Griffin said the lab needs to “be on the front foot” and explain clearly how the breach occurred.

“We need to make sure we can restore people’s faith in in our laboratories that are doing such important work. We need to be confident they’re doing what we need them to do,” he said.

Review to probe how virus samples are kept in labs

Two full samples of hantavirus, which has never been recorded in humans in Australia, are also missing.

Asked why the public were not made aware of the breach sooner, Mr Nicholls said that would form part of the review.

“These are all matters that I think the investigation will be able to provide us with information on,” he said.

Former Supreme Court Justice Martin Daubney will lead the investigation.

Its terms of reference will consider the “management, administration, or delivery of public sector health services in the laboratory”.

Internal policies and guidelines on how virus samples are kept in the lab will be analysed to see if they were correctly followed.

Recommendations will be made in a report to be delivered to the health department by June 30 this year.

The breach comes as thousands of DNA samples are being re-tested after historical flaws were uncovered in the state-run Forensic Science Queensland lab.

More than 40,000 criminal cases were affected by the discovery of systemic failures in the way DNA samples were analysed.

The findings sparked two commissions of inquiry, with the retesting process expected to take years.

The DNA testing lab has faced damning findings from two commissions of inquiry, Jessica van Vonderen explains.

Here are the yearly reports on such problems in the USA, from 2015-2023. Last year CDC collected 215 such reports of accidents in high containment labs using dangerous viruses or bacteria or fungi.

https://www.selectagents.gov/resources/publications/index.htm

Here is last year’s report:

The Federal Select Agent Program had to notify the FBI about 16 separate events last year (from the above report):

Why are we doing ANY restricted experiments? I was happy to hear that both requests to do restricted experiments were denied last year. However, private labs exist and may not be regulated under this program.

There is a lot of pathogen sharing going on, which must be CDC-approved. This is just sharing under one of two programs.

This is the juicy part, below. Yearly, there are always about 200 accidents reported i n the US. One every other day. Allegedly only one lab worker got sick from an accident, while 764 (yes, you got that right!) had to seek medical attention due to an exposure.

There were 8 losses of samples, likely comparable to the Australian loss mentioned above. We don’t know how many samples went missing in each “loss.”

Shouldn’t it be obvious to everyone that the possibilities for disaster are far too high? Using the Dick Cheney standard: prevent it if there is only a 1% chance of something terrible happening, we would shut down all this research.

Remember, while entities are required to make these reports, there is no one standing over their shoulder and forcing them to submit the reports. The reports are essentially voluntary. This is not the standard we need.