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Rudey Might Be Right
Born in a laboratory...
TORONTO -- Word that a scientist in Taiwan has developed SARS after working with the virus in a high-security laboratory has renewed concerns that a future outbreak of the disease could emerge not from the animal markets of southern China but from a lab in any part of the world.
The fact that the scientist was working in a P4-level lab - the highest level of security, used to study the most dangerous pathogens - is a source of real concern, experts admitted Wednesday.
"Absolutely. It really is," Dick Thompson, director of communications for the World Health Organization's communicable diseases division, said in an interview from Beijing.
Canadian SARS expert Dr. Donald Low was stunned at the news that someone working in a p4-level lab - where spacesuit-like garb and extraordinary biosafety measures are the norm - could become infected.
"I can't imagine how it could have happened," Low said. "To don all of that equipment, work with it and leave - how could you possibly get infected?
"It does show you that this is something that is highly infectious when you're working in special settings."
Canada needs to take the matter seriously, Low warned.
"For us this is a wake-up call to make sure that we have our ducks in a row," he said. "I think it would be obviously tragic if we had such an example occur here in Canada of a preventible transmission."
This is the second case of laboratory transmission of SARS since the World Health Organization declared the global outbreak over on July 5.
In September, officials in Singapore revealed that a researcher working in a P3-level lab (one step down from P4) had acquired the disease. He did not transmit SARS to anyone else and has recovered.
But that earlier incident was a stark reminder to worried international public health officials that human error in a laboratory could trigger a new global outbreak.
At a special meeting in October, the WHO issued recommendations on lab safety. The organization asked governments to do an inventory of how many labs have SARS tissue samples or virus stocks and audit the conditions under which they are stored and worked upon.
"Of all the places SARS could be - maybe civets, maybe some other (animal) reservoir in the environment, we just don't know. But we do know one place where the human virus is: It's in the lab," Thompson explained.
"But in what labs? We don't know in how many labs. We don't know what conditions they're being stored under. How they're being used? What are the safety procedures? We know what we've recommended. But you've got to have that knowledge in order to provide rational guidance."
Low said if Health Canada hasn't started drawing up this inventory, it needs to urgently.
"It's important to take stock, literally, of what's going on in Canda. Who's got the virus? Who's working with it? Under what conditions are they working with it?" Low noted.
"And probably a more important question is: Should we be providing guidelines and ensuring that those guidelines are being followed if people are going to work with this virus."
Just how many labs in Canada have the virus and are working with may not be known.
"I honestly have no idea," Low admitted.
But most major academic centres would have a P3 level lab - the minimum required for working with the virus. And many universities around the country are collaborating on fast-track programs to develop vaccines and rapid diagnostic tests for SARS. Those programs are funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
© Copyright 2003 The Canadian Press
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