THE US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reported to have reassigned the director of the bioterror lab behind the potential anthrax exposure of dozens of scientists and staff.
The possible exposure has forced as many as 84 employees at the agency’s Atlanta campus to get a vaccine or take powerful antibiotics with known side effects to ward off potentially deadly anthrax disease.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that Michael Farrell, the head of its Bioterror Rapid Response and Advanced Technology Laboratory, had been reassigned.
Workers at the centre of the scare were not wearing proper protective equipment while experimenting with the bacterium because they thought the research samples had been deactivated.
CDC scientists have been using swabs and wipes to take samples from all lab surfaces that might have been contaminated.
Results have so far been negative, but the CDC said it would continue to monitor the samples in the coming days.
Anthrax, a disease caused by a germ that lives in soil, gained notoriety after a spate of US mail attacks in 2001 killed five people out of 22 infected.
Symptoms of anthrax exposure include skin ulcers, nausea and vomiting and fever.
Agencies/Canadajournal
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