Feds at Loss on How Flu Strain Got to Labs

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Feds at Loss on How Flu Strain Got to Labs

 

By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer

 

Thursday, April 14, 2005

 

 

(04-14) 10:04 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

 

Federal officials are still at a loss to explain how a potentially

deadly strain of influenza could be sent to more than 4,000 labs

around the world.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is operating under the

presumption that the H2N2 strain was purposefully included in the

panels designed to test the labs' proficiency in identifying viruses.

 

" I'm sure it was not an inadvertent use, " said Dr. Julie Gerberding,

CDC director, " because it would be almost impossible to believe that

they didn't know they were dealing with H2N2. "

 

The samples were sent, beginning in September, as part of a testing

process that measures a laboratory's proficiency in detecting various

strains of influenza. The College of American Pathologists directs the

testing and contracted with Meridian Bioscience Inc., a company based

in Cincinnati, to distribute the test panels.

 

The organization has a policy of excluding micro-organisms that can

harm people from the test panels.

 

Dr. Jared Schwartz, an officer with the organization, said Meridian

thought it had sent an ordinary flu strain, meaning a strain for which

there are vaccines readily available. He said Meridian found the virus

in 2000 in a " germ library " that had come from another company.

 

Meridian executives were traveling and not available to comment,

spokeswoman Brenda Hughes said.

 

Gerberding said she believes the strain was included in the test kit

because it grows well and can be easily manipulated in the lab yet

" without really considering that even a test strain in a panel could

potentially cause a hazard, not only to the workers in the lab but to

the people in the community. "

 

CDC officials said the likelihood of the virus getting out in the

public is remote, and that there are no signs anyone has contracted it.

 

" If an unusual virus had emerged, we would have known it by now, "

Gerberding said.

 

Still, she said, the agency was intent on ensuring that every sample

shipped to more than 4,000 labs in 18 countries or territories had

been destroyed.

 

The World Health Organization's influenza chief, Klaus Stohr, said he

was " relatively confident " most of the samples outside the United

States would be destroyed by Friday.

 

Canada, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore have destroyed their

samples, while Japan was doing the same, WHO said. Taiwan and Germany

announced they had destroyed all their vials.

 

The germ, the 1957 H2N2 " Asian flu " strain, killed between 1 million

and 4 million people. It has not been included in flu vaccines since

1968; anyone born after that date has little or no immunity to it.

 

Gerberding said the CDC would work with the pathologists and other

organizations to establish better guidelines for proficiency testing.

 

Congressional action is also possible.

 

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a heart-lung surgeon, said

the shipments underscored " the need to bolster America's domestic and

global public health infrastructure. "

 

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said the virus shipments raises concerns

about how they could be used by terrorists.

 

" We need a strong system to be put in place to limit the access to

these materials and reduce the potential for an accidental or an

intentional release of pathogens that pose a serious health hazard, "

Markey said in a letter to Michael Chertoff, the secretary for

homeland security.

 

Mike Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research

and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said he agreed that

Congress should review how the strain was so easily distributed.

 

" We can't have this happen, " Osterholm said. " Who needs terrorists or

Mother Nature, when through our own stupidity, we do things like this? "

 

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AP medical writers Emma Ross and Marilynn Marchione and science writer

Malcolm Ritter contributed to this report.

 

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