Children's Health Defense By
Between 2000 and 2021 at least 16 pathogens reportedly escaped from research laboratories, according to a new study published in The Lancet Microbe — but the study authors said their findings may “only represent the tip of the iceberg” in terms of numbers due to a lack of standard reporting requirements.
A team of researchers surveyed peer-reviewed articles and online reports in English, Chinese and German, looking for all indications that a pathogen accidentally “escaped” from a lab or that an infection was determined to be “laboratory-acquired” during the study period.
In addition to the 16 episodes of pathogenic “escape,” the researchers found 309 instances of lab-acquired infections caused by 51 different pathogens.
Seventy-seven percent of those infections were caused by bacterial pathogens, 13.9% were caused by viruses, 7.1% by parasites, 1.6% by fungi and less than 1% by a prion agent.
Eight of the cases were fatal, and six of those deaths were caused by bacteria, such as Yersinia pestis, which causes plague, or Neisseria meningitidis. One death was caused by Ebola virus.
The vast majority of infections occurred as an outcome of “procedural errors,” breaches of biosafety or risk mitigation procedures, which included using the wrong personal protective equipment, having inadequate training or mishandling samples.
Needlestick injuries, spills, splashes, open vials, animal bites or “unknown reasons” caused the remainder of the infections.
Most illnesses occurred in North America, Europe and Asia with the U.S. accounting for more than three-quarters of the infections. The majority of pathogen escapes were “internal,” meaning they were confined to the lab, but a few escaped into the broader community.
Some of the more well-known examples of external escapes discussed in the report included a large-scale outbreak of Brucella in 2019, which leaked from a biopharmaceutical plant where the Chinese state produced animal brucellosis vaccines in Lanzou, China.
The factory had been using expired disinfectants and sanitizers, resulting in poor sanitization of the waste gas from its fermentation vats. The gas contained aerosolized Brucella, which the wind carried southeast toward the Veterinary Research Institute and nearby communities.
Initial brucellosis infections were identified at the research institute in November 2019 and the factory was shut down, but the spread could not be contained.
By November 2020, more than 10,000 people were infected with brucellosis, which causes fevers and muscular pain that can last from weeks to years.
In another highly-publicized incident of lab escape documented in the paper, a West Nile virus researcher — who had only 20 minutes of training in a P3 lab (or Biosafety Level 3, BSL3 lab) in Singapore — became infected in 2003 with the first SARS virus while working. The researcher exposed 84 contacts and risked reigniting the 2002-2004 SARS epidemic there, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists…
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