TravelGuides – Only a quarter of the 59 labs that handle the world’s deadliest pathogens have high-stage biosecurity, experts warn. They fear lax rules could lead to another pandemic.
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There are 59 biosafety stage 4 labs (BSL-4) in the world, however solely a few scored excessive on security.
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A brand new report revealed solely a quarter of international locations with these labs have excessive biosecurity scores.
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The labs are the place researchers work with the most harmful pathogens on the planet.
Only round a quarter of international locations with biosafety level 4 labs – the place researchers work with the world’s deadliest pathogens – have excessive biosecurity scores, according to a new report.
As US intelligence companies are investigating the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, extra questions are being raised about the security and safety of comparable such labs round the world.
Gregory Koblentz, an affiliate professor of biodefence at George Mason University, and Filippa Lentzos at King’s College London not too long ago mapped out all of these amenities using open-source research. Their findings might be discovered here.
Read extra: How DNA-testing startup Helix became one of the nation’s leading coronavirus tracking labs
According to their report, there are at the very least 59 most BSL-4 labs that are presently in operation, underneath development, or deliberate round the world. They span 23 international locations, together with the UK, US, China, and India.
The largest focus of BSL-4 labs is in Europe (25) whereas North America and Asia have roughly equal numbers, with 14 and 13 respectively. Three-quarters of the labs are based mostly in city facilities.
But solely about one-quarter of the international locations with BSL-4 labs acquired excessive scores for biosafety and biosecurity as measured by the Global Health Security Index, the report discovered.
“Our study also revealed that there was significant room for improvement in the policies in place to ensure that these labs were operated safely, securely and responsibly,” Koblentz and Lentzos wrote in the Guardian.
“The vast majority of countries with BSL-4 labs do not conduct oversight of the type of gain-of-function research that has been a central feature in the debate on COVID-19’s origin, as potentially responsible for the possible leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” they added.
The report has some experts nervous that lax controls and rules at some areas could lead to another pandemic.
“The larger the number of institutions and the larger the number of individuals with access to these dangerous agents, the greater the risk,” Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, advised the Financial Times. “Accidents and leaks already happen in very large numbers, especially in places that have weaker biosafety standards.”
“We need to strengthen biosafety and biosecurity rules around the world” Ebright added.
BSL-4 labs are constructed so that researchers can safely work with pathogens that may cause critical illnesses and for which no therapy or vaccine exists. Researchers working there are extremely educated and should put on private protecting tools.
To date, greater than 176 million circumstances of coronavirus have been reported worldwide, according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins University. More than 3.8 million individuals have died.
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TravelGuides – Only a quarter of the 59 labs that handle the world’s deadliest pathogens have high-stage biosecurity, experts warn. They fear lax rules could lead to another pandemic.