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This article has been updated with the results of the CDC investigation.
After an investigation into vials labeled “smallpox” found in a Pennsylvania lab, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday evening they had found no evidence the vials contained the smallpox virus, the cause of the disease. .
The vials “were accidentally discovered by a lab worker while cleaning a freezer at a facility that conducts vaccine research in Pennsylvania,” CDC spokesperson Belsie González said in an early email. Thursday.
At the end of the day, the agency announced that laboratory tests showed that five vials labeled “smallpox” contained vaccinia, the virus used in the smallpox vaccine.
“There is no evidence that the vials contain the smallpox virus, the cause of smallpox,” the CDC said in a statement Thursday.
The health agency added it was “in close contact” with state and local health officials, law enforcement and the World Health Organization about the results. The vials had been sent to the CDC for testing on Thursday after being found.
The CDC did not say where the vials were found or how many there were, except that they were found at a facility that researches vaccines in Pennsylvania.
Mark O’Neill, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said there were a “small number of vials” found at a Merck facility in Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia.
Merck did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. FBI referred investigations to CDC
“The Pennsylvania Department of Health would like to point out that there have been no known threats to public health and safety,†said Mr. O’Neill.
Citing a notification from the state health department, Kelly Cofrancisco, spokesperson for the Montgomery County Communications Office, said there were a total of “15 questionable vials” including five labeled “smallpox” and 10 as a “vaccine”.
Smallpox, an infectious disease caused by the smallpox virus, has caused devastating epidemics for centuries, with around three in 10 cases proving fatal, according to the CDC
Symptoms include a very high fever and a progressive, swollen rash.
The virus claimed the lives of 300 million people in the 20th century, according to the WHO
In the event of an epidemic, the CDC said, “there is enough smallpox vaccine to immunize every person in the United States.”
The agency said the last natural smallpox outbreak in the United States was in 1949. The last known natural case was in Somalia in 1977, according to the WHO
The WHO said there were two authorized warehouses of variola virus stocks, with the CDC in Atlanta and a research center in Russia. In July 2014, six glass vials containing the smallpox virus were found in a storage room at a government lab outside of Washington. At the time, the CDC said there was no indication that lab workers or the public had been exposed to the content.
The CDC said smallpox research in the United States has focused on developing vaccines, drugs and diagnostic tests to protect people from smallpox in the event that it is used for bioterrorism.
Dr Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said smallpox can be fatal “even after being freeze-dried.”
He said that due to its highly infectious nature, “the virus itself should be kept cold.” At room temperature after many years, he said, the virus was “unlikely to retain the ability to infect people.”
Dr Glatter added that there had been an ongoing debate over whether governments should keep viral samples or eliminate all known copies of the virus.
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