List of accidents and incidents involving laboratory biosecurity

This list of accidents and incidents involving laboratory biosecurity includes accidental Laboratory-acquired infections and laboratory releases of lethal pathogens, containment failures in or during transport of lethal pathogens, and incidents of exposure of lethal pathogens to laboratory personnel, improper disposal of contaminated waste, and/or the escape of laboratory animals. The list is grouped by the year in which the accident or incident occurred.

1903

• A group of 24 inmates at Manila's Bilibid Prison were infected with plague through a contaminated cholera vaccine, administered by Richard Pearson Strong. 13 of the inmates died.[1]

1943

• 20 May 1943 – death of Dora Lush after accidentally pricking her finger with a needle containing lethal scrub typhus while attempting to develop a vaccine for the disease

1966

• 30 July 1971 – 1966 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom was an outbreak of mild smallpox which began with Tony McLennan, a photographer at the Medical School in Birmingham, which housed a smallpox laboratory and where 12 years later a fatal smallpox outbreak would occur, also beginning with a medical photographer.[2]

1971

• 30 July 1971 – 1971 Aral smallpox incident was the outbreak of viral disease which occurred as a result of a field test at a Soviet biological weapons facility on an island in the Aral Sea. The incident sickened ten people, of whom three died, and came to widespread public notice only in 2002.[3]

1973

• A report compiling a number of cases of laboratory-acquired viral infections between 1963 and1 977 at the Virus Research Laboratory, Ibadan, Nigeria, details 936 cases and 54 deaths. Of those cases, 474 were caused by arboviruses, including Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Kyasanur Forest disease, vesicular stomatitis, Rift Valley fever, Tick-borne encephalitis, louping ill,chikungunya, West Nile fever, yellow fever, and Wesselsbron virus.[4]

1976

• 1976 – Ebola laboratory infection by the accidental stick of contaminated needle in the United Kingdom.[5]

1977

• 1977 – 1977–1978 Russian flu release of re-emergent strain of Influenza A/USSR/90/77 (H1N1), suspected to have originated from a laboratory in either Russia or Northern China, and found to have been circulating for approximately one year before it was detected.[6]

1978

• August 11 1978 – 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom due to accidental exposure of a strain of smallpox virus that had been grown in a research laboratory in The East Wing of the University of Birmingham Medical School, leading to the illness and death of Janet Parker, who became the last recorded person to die of the disease.
• 1978 – Plum Island Foot-and-mouth disease outbreak

1979

• April 2, 1979 – Sverdlovsk anthrax leak spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a Soviet military research facility near the city of Sverdlovsk, Russia (now Yekaterinburg), resulting in approximately 100 deaths, although the exact number of victims remains unknown. The cause of the outbreak was denied by the Soviet authorities, and all medical records of the victims were removed to hide serious violations of the Biological Weapons Convention that had come in effect in 1975. The accident is sometimes referred to as "biological Chernobyl".

1988

• 1988 – Marburg virus infection researcher Nikolai Ustinov infected himself lethally with after accidentally pricking himself with a syringe used for inoculation of guinea pigs. The accident occurred at the Scientific-Production Association "Vektor" (today the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology "Vektor") in Koltsovo, USSR (today Russia).[7]

1990

• 1990 – Marburg virus outbreak due to laboratory accident in Koltsovo, Soviet Union, killing one lab worker.[8]

2002

• 2002 - two cases of laboratory-acquired West Nile virus infections through dermal punctures.[9]
• 2002 - incident in Japan with Arthroderma benhamiae.[10]

2003

• August 2003 – SARS Laboratory accident a 27-year-old doctoral student at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) developed symptoms consistent with SARS. An investigation found that the student was infected with samples from SARS coronavirus in the Department of Pathology, while it two BSL-2 and BSL-3 laboratories were undergoing renovation, which compromised safety practices.[11]

2004

• April 2004 – SARS Laboratory accidents Two researchers at the The Viral Disease Prevention and Control Institute, part of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, China around April 2004, who spread it to around six other people. The two researchers contracted it 2 weeks apart.[12]

• A researcher at Russian biological weapons research facility VECTOR died after accidentally pricking herself with a needle contaminated with the Ebola virus.[13]

• Two incidents of Foot-and-mouth disease outbreak at Plum Island.

2007

• January 2007 – A 2007 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak accidental discharge of virus FMDV BFS 1860 O from a laboratory of the Institute for Animal Health in Pirbright, through possible leakage from broken pipework and via unsealed overflowing manholes, leading to foot-and-mouth disease infections of over 2,000 animals at four nearby farms.

2009

• September 13 2009 Death of Malcolm Casadaban following an accidental laboratory exposure to an attenuated strain of Yersinia pestis, a bacterium that causes the plague.[14]

2011

• 2011 - A scientist at a research laboratory in Australia got infected with Dengue through a mosquito bite in the laboratory. [15]

2012

• May 2012 – The UK's Animal and Plant Health Agency sent out live samples of anthrax by mistake. Its Surrey lab was subject to a Crown Prohibition Notice (CPN), closing it until improvements were made.[16]
• April 28 2012 – Richard Din died after being infected during vaccine research into Neisseria meningitidis bacteria at a lab inside San Francisco's VA medical center.[17]

2013

• April 2013 to September 2014 – eight mice, some of which may have possibly been infected with SARS or the H1N1 flu virus, escaped from a laboratory at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.[18]
• 2013 – a researcher at the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Milwaukee accidentally punctured his gloved hand with a needle loaded with H5N1, a highly pathogenic avian influenza. This incident was one of four notifiable accidents involving dermal punctures at the facility.[19]

2014

• March 12, 2014 – Accidental shipping of H9N2 vials contaminated with H5N1 from the CDC lab to a USDA lab.[20]
• June 5, 2014 – Accidental exposure of viable anthrax to 75 personnel at CDC's Roybal Campus.[21][22][23]
• July 1, 2014 – Discovery of six vials containing viable smallpox from the 1950s mislabeled as Variola at the FDA's White Oak campus.[24]
• H2 2014 – a deadly bioterror bacterium escaped from a BSL-3 laboratory at the Tulane National Primate Research Center near New Orleans, likely on employee's clothes, infecting two monkeys that lived in outdoor cages and later infecting others.[25]
• August 2014, a Senegalese epidemiologist was infected with Ebola at a BSL-4 laboratory in Kailahun, Sierra Leone. The WHO later shut down the lab.[26]
• 2014, a 30 year old female laboratory worker in South Koera working at a BSL-2 was infected with Dengue through a needlestick injury.[27]

2016

• May 2016 – Researcher infected with zika virus in a laboratory accident at University of Pittsburgh.[28]
• September 2016 – 30 members of staff were exposed to a toxic bacteria at a CSIRO's Black Mountain site in Canberra, Australia.[29] The Australian government has confirmed this incident as one of two biosecurity incidents.[30]

2018

• April 2018 – Ebola from a laboratory accident led to a single worker being exposed to the Ebola virus, though he did not develop symptoms.[31]

2019

• September 17, 2019 – a gas explosion occurred at Vector.[32] One worker suffered third-degree burns, and the blast blew out window panes. The lab has highly contagious forms of bird flu and strains of hepatitis.[33] The explosion happened in a decontamination room that was being renovated by a contractor.[32]

• November 2019 – an accident in a laboratory at the Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute caused 65 workers to become infected with brucellosis, as reported by China's state media.[34] A later report from Reuters indicates that a further 6,620 residents of Lanzhou have been infected as of November 2020, and cites the local government as saying that the outbreak was caused by polluted waste gas from a nearby biopharmaceutical factory, which was carried by wind down to the Veterinary Research Institute, where the first cases were first recorded in November 2019.[35]

See also

• Select agent
• List of anthrax outbreaks
• The Cambridge Working Group

References

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4. https://www.ajtmh.org/view/journals/tpmd/30/4/article-p855.xml?tab_body=pdf
5. Emond, R T; Evans, B; Bowen, E T; Lloyd, G (27 August 1977). "A case of Ebola virus infection". British Medical Journal. 2 (6086): 541–544. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.6086.541. PMC 1631428. PMID 890413.
6. Rozo, Michelle; Gronvall, Gigi Kwik (1 September 2015). "The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate". mBio. 6 (4). doi:10.1128/mBio.01013-15. PMC 4542197. PMID 26286690.
7. Beer, B.; Kurth, R.; Bukreyev, A. (1999). "Characteristics of Filoviridae: Marburg and Ebola viruses". Die Naturwissenschaften. 86 (1): 8–17. Bibcode:1999NW.....86....8B. doi:10.1007/s001140050562. PMID 10024977. S2CID 25789824.
8. Nikiforov, V. V.; Turovskiĭ, I.; Kalinin, P. P.; Akinfeeva, L. A.; Katkova, L. R.; Barmin, V. S.; Riabchikova, E. I.; Popkova, N. I.; Shestopalov, A. M.; Nazarov, V. P. (1994). "A case of a laboratory infection with Marburg fever". Zhurnal Mikrobiologii, Epidemiologii, I Immunobiologii (3): 104–6. PMID 7941853.
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10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6073996/
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21. Grant, Bob (22 June 2014). "Dozens of Researchers Exposed to Anthrax". The Scientist.
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24. "FDA Review of the 2014 Discovery of Vials Labeled "Variola" and Other Vials Discovered in an FDA-Occupied Building on the NIH Campus". www.fda.gov. 13 December 2016. Retrieved 2021-01-22.
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27. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300083293_Laboratory-acquired_dengue_virus_infection_by_needlestick_injury_A_case_report_South_Korea_2014
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30. https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6160626747001
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34. https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201912/06/WS5deb4fe7a310cf3e3557c92a.html
35. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-brucellosis-china-idUKKBN27L1LY