Time: 2024-12-18
hundred of virus sample, include Hendra virus, Lyssavirus, and Hantavirus, have disappear from a lab in Queensland, Australia. The Queensland government has establish an probe into this major biosecurity breach. The miss phial were report to have disappear from the Public Health Virology Laboratory in August 2023.
The lab where the sample travel miss supply diagnostic services, surveillance, and research for assorted virus and pathogen. It remains ill-defined whether the miss sample were steal or destroy. The government has guarantee the populace that there be currently no evidence of any hazard to the community.
Dr. Sam Scarpino, director of Army_Intelligence and life science at Northeastern University in Boston, stress the critical nature of this biosecurity oversight. He foreground the high-consequence of the miss pathogen, which could airs a significant menace to populace health. While the fatality rates of these virus in world are high, the hazard of person-to-person transmission is relatively low.
The pathogen that have travel miss include Hendra virus, a zoonotic virus found only in Australia, Hantavirus, a family of virus with change badness degree, and Lyssavirus, which incorporate the rabies virus. Scarpino stress the importance of increase investing and transparency in pathogen biosecurity to prevent such incident in the future.
Chief Health Officer Dr. John Gerrard reassure the populace that there be currently no evidence of any populace hazard associate with the miss virus sample. He explain that virus sample would rapidly degrade outside of control conditions, devising them not-infectious. Additionally, there have been no homo case of Hendra or Lyssavirus in Queensland in the past five old_age, and no confirm case of Hantavirus infection in Australia.
Although the hazard of exposure is low, it is necessity to determine the whereabouts of the miss sample to confirm that there be no ongoing hazard. While the situation is being take seriously by the government, there be a call for increase investing and transparency in pathogen biosecurity to prevent similar incident from happen in the future.