United States: Health officials are investigating a serious breach after 323 dangerous virus samples went missing from a state laboratory. The missing samples which included live viruses like the Hendra virus, Lyssavirus, and Hantavirus also this breach was first noticed in August 2023, but it has just been made public. The incident has raised concerns about biosecurity and safety protocols at the laboratory.
As reported by The Pinnacle Gazette, the samples were missing after a freezer where the samples were stored seems to have developed a break down. “Further disturbing, no paperwork was processed to completion when transferring the materials to another operational freezer,” Nicholls said. This oversight has resulted to questionable whether the samples were disbursed or lost within the compound of the laboratory.
Hendra virus is fairly dangerous due to the possibility for the virus to transmute and break out from animals to infect humans. Transmitted largely through contact with affected horses, the virus was earlier known to have caused deaths in both people and animals.
The first identified Hendra virus incident occurred in 1994 in Australia, where 13 horses and one human died, and the consequences are being followed to this day since more incidents occurred in Australia up to the present.
“Not only did Queensland Health fail in adequately containing the H1N1 virus, with such a serious breach of biosecurity principles, it must exhaustively examine how this occurred and provide substantial steps to make sure it does not reoccur,” Minister Nicholls stated categorically concluding that the public should be informed.
However, early consensus with health professionals have shown low probability of threat to public health at this stage Dr. John Gerrard, the Queensland Chief Health Officer, asserted that, “The public is at low risk, because these viral samples are very fragile and don’t survive outside optimum conditions for preservation.”
Gerrard entertained the public by ensuring them that within Queensland no human has ever contracted the Hendra virus in the last five years while for hantavirus, it has not been proven to infect human in Australia.
This gives some comforting news relatively, but of course, such cases do not fail to provoke certain questions regarding management and security in the lab.
A number of specialists have expressed their opinions on the scale of the violation that took place. Dr. Dr Paul Griffin, infectious diseases expert said, “Such breaks should not be encouraged – laboratories handling hazardous pathogens normally have very strict protocols.”