More than 2,300 tubes containing samples of the potentially deadly SARS virus have gone “missing” from a high-security laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
The research body insists there is no cause for alarm as the samples have “no infectious potential”, but it has filed a complaint against “persons unknown” in an attempt to resolve the mysterious disappearance.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, is a contagious respiratory illness that first appeared in China in November 2002, when it killed 775 people and infected around 8,000. There has been no known transmission of SARS anywhere in the world since 2004.
During a recent inventory researchers at the Pasteur Institute, which was among the first to isolate HIV in the 1980s, discovered they had lost some 2,349 vials containing samples of the SARS virus.
Unable to locate the samples, the body called in France’s drug and health safety agency, to help with the search.
Credit to The Telegraph
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