Labs Scramble to Destroy Deadly Flu Samples

An anonymous reader submits "According to this Yahoo! news story, a deadly strain of the Flu virus was mistakenly sent out to thousands of labs, mostly in the U.S., as samples for routine testing. The samples were sent starting last year, but the rush to destroy them began shortly after the WHO raised an alert last Friday following its discovery by the National Microbial Laboratory Canada on March 26. It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people -- was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs."

Comments

All a big misunderstanding....

[Ian_Bailey]

It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people -- was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs.

Yeah, I'll bet the guy who leaked it is sorry, it was supposed to be the 1918 strain.

Re:so a private firm made lots of it to send out

[Short Circuit]

It would really help to RTFA this time, because, while this is a serious screwup, it's not what a lot of people are thinking after reading the poorly worded summary.

In response to your misunderstanding, the sample was distributed in a kit intended for testing sample-identification equipment. Not for testing on people, or even for making vaccines.

PLEASE, people, RTFA this time. The last thing we need is for people to jump to conclusions.

/me larts "An anonymous reader"...

Re:this is the way the world ends

[PakProtector]

I do speak Latin, and virvs, atleast in my dictionary, is indeclinable, like nil / nihil. Also, when the word is used in english, as a loanword, it is pluralised as viruses, not virii, which is just plain stupid, as for a latin word to end in double i it has to end in -ivs.