US : CDC shuts 2 labs after anthrax, flu accidents

Citing an anthrax scare and a recurring problem with safety, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday shut down two research labs and stopped shipping highly dangerous germs to other labs.

One of the closed facilities was involved an incident last month that could have accidentally exposed workers in three labs to anthrax. A second, previously undisclosed problem earlier this year involved deadly bird flu.

The agency has also temporarily barred high-security labs from transporting dangerous pathogens.

There have been no reported infections from previous cases, and no-one potentially exposed to anthrax has shown signs of illness, CDC officials said.

“These events should never have happened,” CDC Director Tom Frieden told reporters on Friday.

“I’m disappointed, and frankly I’m angry about it,” he said, adding later he was “astonished that this could have happened here”.

The incidents were listed in a report on a potential anthrax exposure in June, which occurred when researchers in a high-level biosecurity laboratory failed to follow proper procedures and did not deactivate the bacteria.

The samples were then moved to a lower-security lab in the agency’s Atlanta campus.

“This is not the first time an event of this nature has occurred at CDC, nor the first time it occurred from the [bioterror response] laboratory,” the report said.

The CDC only recently learned of a separate incident in May in which a sample of the avian flu was cross-contaminated with a highly pathogenic version of the virus and then shipped to an agriculture department laboratory.

The influenza lab and the bioterror response laboratory have been temporarily closed in response.

Agencies/Canadajournal