Australia admits shocking lab breach

Over 300 vials containing live samples of three viruses with high mortality rates went missing from a Queensland laboratory in 2021, but the Australian authorities only confirmed the breech on Monday.

The vials became unaccounted for after a freezer at Queensland’s Public Health Virology Laboratory broke down sometime in 2021. The discrepancy was discovered in August 2023, but it took until Monday for official confirmation of the incident to emerge.

The missing samples were identified as Hantavirus, Hendra virus and Lyssavirus.

Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard said it was “difficult to conceive of a scenario” in which the public could be at risk, pointing to the lack of reports about infections over the past five years.

“It’s important to note that virus samples would degrade very rapidly outside a low temperature freezer and become non-infectious,” Gerrard said, speculating that the samples may have been destroyed in an autoclave, according to safety protocols.

Nearly 100 of the missing vials contained Hendra, according to Queensland authorities. Two of the vials contained samples of Hantavirus, a rodent-borne pathogen with a mortality rate of around 38%. The remaining 223 vials contained Lyssavirus, which is similar to rabies. There have been only three confirmed case of Lyssavirus infection in Australia since it was first identified in 1996, all of them fatal.

Queensland Health Minister Tim Nicholls told reporters there was no reason to believe the samples were stolen deliberately or for nefarious purposes.

“Of course, all this kind of research is taken in secret, but we are not aware that this has been weaponized in any way,” Nicholls said. “The process of weaponizing a virus is very sophisticated, and is not something an amateur does.”

According to Nicholls, there is no evidence that Hendra virus has ever been weaponized anywhere. The virus, first discovered in horses in the 1990s, has infected only a handful of humans, but many of them fatally.

The authorities called the case of the missing samples a “serious breach of biosecurity protocols” and pledged to investigate what happened and how it went unnoticed for nearly two years. Queensland Health has taken measures including “retraining staff to ensure ongoing compliance with required regulations and an audit of all relevant permits” to ensure the correct storage of materials, Nicholls said in a statement.

The inquiry will be led by retired Australian Supreme Court Judge Martin Daubney, aided by biosecurity expert Dr. Julian Druce, the authorities have announced.