Labs Scramble to Destroy Deadly Flu Samples

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 12, 2005 @01:26PM from the where's-jeff-goldblum-when-you-need-him dept.

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."

1 of 74 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

All a big misunderstanding.... by Ian_Bailey · 2005-04-12 13:57 · Score: 3, Informative

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.