Hundreds of vials containing deadly viruses have gone missing from a lab in Australia and remain unaccounted for.
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Queensland Health Minister Tim Nicholls made the shocking announcement earlier this week, noting that 323 vials are not accounted for — 98 held the hendra virus, two vials had the hantavirus, and 223 vials contained lyssavirus, all of which are extremely deadly for humans, the Daily Mail reported.
Authorities said that while the samples could be weaponized, this is “not something an amateur does.”
What is arguably most terrifying is that the samples went missing in 2021 but investigators only confirmed the breach of security in August of last year.
Officials believe the vials were lost by Queensland’s Public Health Virology Laboratory when the storage freezer containing the viruses broke down.
“It’s this part of the transfer of those materials that is causing concern,” Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard said in a press conference.
“They were transferred to a functioning freezer without the appropriate paperwork being completed,” Gerrard continued.
“The materials may have been removed from that secure storage and lost, or otherwise unaccounted for.”
Hendra virus is a rare disease originating in fruit bats that can be transmitted to humans from animals that causes severe and often fatal disease in both infected horses and humans, according to the World Health Organization.
Hantaviruses can infect and cause serious disease, including hantavirus pulmonary syndrome and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, in people worldwide who have come into contact with rodents like rats and mice, particularly when exposed to their urine, droppings and saliva, the CDC reports.
Lyssavirus is a form of rabies which can infect humans and other mammals usually following a bite or scratch from a rabid animal, according to WHO.
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The initial symptoms are fever and often pain or paraesthesia. There is no known cure and the infection is almost always fatal.
Queensland authorities were only able to confirm the samples were missing this month after waiting a year for approval to open the freezer where they were stored.
Officials said there is no evidence that suggests members of the publics are at risk of infection from the missing vials.
“It’s important to note that virus samples would degrade very rapidly outside a low temperature freezer and become non-infectious,” Gerrard noted.
“It’s most likely that the samples were destroyed by autoclaving as is routine laboratory practice and not adequately recorded.”
An independent investigation has been commissioned by Queensland Health into how the vials disappeared, and ensure an incident like this does not happen again.
That said, Gerrard assured that he has no reason to believe the samples were deliberately stolen for sinister purposes.
“There is nothing to suggest that these have been taken from the laboratory,” he said, adding, “we don’t have any evidence that Hendra virus has been weaponized in any way in any research laboratory.”
He did, acknowledge, however, that “all this kind of research is taken in secret, but we are not aware that this has been weaponized in any way. The process of weaponizing a virus is very sophisticated, and is not something an amateur does.”