(National-NBC) April 13, 2005 - It's a flu virus so deadly it killed more than a million people in 1957. Scientists around the world are scrambling to destroy more than 3700 samples accidentally shipped to labs in eighteen countries.
Dr. Klaus Stohr with the World Health Organization fears it could cause a global outbreak, "This virus is fully transmissible from humans to humans and everybody born after 1968 would have no immunity."
The World Health Organization says the risk this deadly Asian flu strain might escape one of the laboratories is small, but frightening.
NBC medical analyst Dr. Sue Bailey says the virus, H2N2, is about twice as deadly as the normal flu, "They estimate that if this got out it could kill one to four million people around the world and 70,000 people in the United States."
The College of American Pathologists and an Ohio bio-science company mistakenly shipped the virus as part of a kit labs routinely use to test their proficiency. Dr. Bailey says the samples are supposed to be benign, "And in this case, they didn't know the strain that was being sent out nor did the company, that this was not a benign strain that this was a very deadly strain."
World health officials are tracking down the samples to ensure they're destroyed, even as they investigate how they got out in the first place. The World Health Organization says it hopes to have all the samples accounted for and destroyed by the end of the week.
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HOW the hell does an accident like this happen? |
