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More than 300 live virus samples went missing from an Australian state-run laboratory in the province of Queensland in what public health officials have deemed a “major breach” of biosecurity.
Queensland Health Minister Tim Nicholls announced Monday that his department is launching an investigation into the 323 virus samples that went missing from the state virology laboratory in 2021 after a freezer storing the samples broke down.
Nicholls told reporters that the security breach was discovered in August 2023 and that it has taken a year for his department to get accreditation from federal agencies to launch the investigation.
“The investigation that I’ve asked the Director General to instigate is the next step in the process to finding out what happened there,” said Nicholls. “It’s important we understand what went wrong. It’s important that we understand how it can be done better.”
The majority of the vials contained samples of lyssavirus, which can cause rabies. Nearly 100 of the missing vials contained Hendra virus, which has a 57% fatality rate among the few human cases since the illness was discovered in the mid-1990s. Two of the vials contained Hantavirus, which also has a high fatality rate.
Nicholls stressed that there is “no evidence so far” of any public health threats linked to the lost vials.
“The Department is taking all necessary steps to ensure that it does have the appropriate regulatory matters in place,” he said. “It is liaising with federal record-keeping bodies and the federal accreditation bodies as well as with our own department of agriculture.”
Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard told reporters that the virus samples would have degraded very rapidly if they were not kept in freezer conditions, making them no longer infectious.
Gerrard also said there is no evidence that the missing viruses, particularly Hendra virus, have been misappropriated for means of biological warfare.
“We don’t have any evidence that Hendra virus has been weaponized in any way in any research laboratory,” said Gerrard. “Of course, this kind of research is taken in secret, but I am not aware that this is being weaponized in any way. And the process of weaponizing a virus is very sophisticated and is not something that an amateur does.”
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