Thursday, April 14, 2005


Herald.com | 04/13/2005 | Violent flu strain mistakenly sent to labs
Paging Mr. King....Mr. King, clean up on aisle 5....

A dangerous strain of the flu virus that caused a worldwide pandemic in 1957 was sent to thousands of laboratories in the United States and around the world, triggering a frantic effort to destroy the samples to prevent an outbreak, health officials revealed Tuesday.

Because the virus is easily transmitted from person to person and many have no immunity to it, the discovery has raised alarm that it could cause another deadly pandemic if a laboratory worker became infected, officials said.

As a result, health authorities were urgently working to make sure all samples are destroyed and to closely monitor anyone who may have come into contact with the virus for signs of illness, officials said.

The problem arose when Meridian Bioscience Inc. of Cincinnati, a private company, sent a panel of virus samples to about 3,700 laboratories, some in doctors' offices, to be tested as part of routine quality-control certification conducted by the College of American Pathologists. An additional 2,750 laboratories, all in the United States, received the samples and were asked to destroy them, CDC spokesman Dan Rutz said.

The panel samples usually include only strains of the flu virus that are relatively benign, Stohr said. ``We would consider this an unwise and unfortunate decision.''

The samples were sent out beginning last fall, primarily to labs in the United States, although 14 were in Canada and 61 were in 16 other countries, Stohr said.

The mistake came to light March 25 when the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, identified the virus. 'They were doing this routine testing and identified this virus and said, `This shouldn't be here,' '' Rutz said.

Sent out last fall and only now discovered? Wow. Glad you guys are keeping close tabs on this stuff.