Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Australia, Dec 11. - Australian authorities have launched an investigation following the disappearance of 323 infectious virus samples from a Queensland state laboratory in a "serious biosecurity failure," state health minister Tim Nicholls said this week.
The samples disappeared in 2021, but investigators did not confirm the leak until August 2023. Roads that included samples of the Hendra virus, lyssavirus and hantavirus, reportedly disappeared after the freezer that stored them was damaged.
The lab could not specify whether the materials were removed or destroyed. "It's this part of the transfer of those materials that is causing concern," Nicholls said.
According to the minister, there is no indication that the samples were stolen or stolen from the laboratory. Asked why the public was not previously informed of the disappearance, the official replied that this would be part of the review to be carried out in the investigation.
For his part, the state's director general of health, John Gerrard, considered the breach of the records a serious fact, but said the risk to the community was very low. "It is important to note that these virus samples would degrade very quickly outside a freezer at low temperature and cease to be infectious," he explained.
"No cases of Hendra or lyssavirus have been detected among people in Queensland in the last five years, and there has never been any reports of hatavirus infections in humans in Australia," he said.
He also stressed that specialists have "no evidence that the Hendra virus has been converted into a weapon of any kind in any research laboratory."
"Of course, all this kind of investigation is conducted in secret, but we have no knowledge of it being turned into a weapon. The process of turning a virus into a weapon is very sophisticated and it's not something an amateur does," Gerrard said. (Text and Photo: Cubasí)
