Ebola Samples Pose No Threat to CDC Staff
An internal investigation at a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory after the Ebola incident in December has revealed that the samples did not contain live virus. Thus, the samples were of no threat to the lower-security lab. The issue and concerns arose after there were questions raised as to how the world's deadliest pathogens get handled by the laboratory and the research agencies. There have been close calls following the mishaps related to a deadly strain of bird flu and anthrax as reported by Reuters.
Dr. Tom Frieden, who is the Director of CDC, says that the agency has made significant progress concerning the safety and the risks involved, but admitted that there is more that needs to be done. It was found that a scientist working with Ebola caused the most horrible outbreak in West Africa in 2014. The virus was accidentally transferred from a high-biosecurity lab to a lower-biosecurity, which was not prepared or authorized to handle live Ebola. When looked at, the main cause of the error was found to be a lack of a written study plan for the lab that specific the steps to be followed in an experiment? In addition, there was no plan designed to reduce the likelihood of any human errors.
The issue surfaced after the first lab incident where there was a mix up of tubes carrying strains of Ebola. The tubes were identical, and there were no visual cues and, as a result, the wrong tubes reached the lower-biosecurity lab. This incident has surfaced as serious concerns about how those deadly-pathogens are handled in the lab. The CDC is actively looking for ways as to how to prevent such mistakes that can lead to further incidents. They are thinking of different-sized containers and colored liquids to differentiate live from dead pathogens, so as to minimise any human errors.
