Biotechnology,
Health,
News August 13, 2020
Engineered COVID-19-Infected Mouse Bites Researcher Amid ‘Explosion’ Of Risky Coronavirus Research
by Jonathan Latham, PhD
University researchers genetically engineer a human pandemic virus. They inject the new virus into a laboratory mouse. The infected mouse then bites a researcher…..It is a plot worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster about risky coronavirus research.
But according to
newly obtained minutes of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) of the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, these exact events need not be imagined. They occurred for real between April 1st and May 6th this year.
The identity of the bitten coronavirus researcher has not been revealed except that they were working in a high security BSL-3 virus lab when the accident happened.
According to
Richard Ebright, an epidemiologist from Rutgers University, the UNC incident underscores an important development in virus research since the pandemic began:
“There has been an explosion of research involving fully infectious SARS-CoV-2 over the last six months. Research with infectious SARS-CoV-2 now is occurring in every, or almost every, BSL-3 facility in the US and overseas.”..
