Three samples of viruses have gone missing from a Queensland laboratory.
Samples of Hendra virus, Lyssavirus and Hantavirus are still unaccounted for after going missing from Queensland’s Public Health Virology Laboratory in August 2023.
The lab has been unable to confirm if the viruses were taken from secure storage or destroyed.
‘With such a serious breach of biosecurity protocols and infectious virus samples potentially missing, Queensland Health must investigate what occurred and how to prevent it from happening again,’ Health Minister Tim Nicholls told the Courier Mail.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Martin Daubney will lead an Investigation into how the sample went missing.
Mr Julian Druce, who was previously head of the Virus Identification Lab at the Victorian Infectious Disease Reference Laboratory, has been appointed as co-investigator.
Mr Nicholls said the Health Department have advised him measures have been taken to ensure such a thing does not happen again.
Those measures include retraining staff to ensure compliance wit regulations and an audit of all relevant permits to ensure accountability and correct storage of materials.
Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard said the risk to Queenslanders from the apparently lost samples was minimal.
‘It’s difficult to conceive of a scenario whereby the public could be at risk,’ Dr Gerrard said.
‘It’s important to note that virus samples would degrade very rapidly outside a low temperature freezer and become non-infectious.
‘It’s most likely that the samples were destroyed by autoclaving as is routine laboratory practice and not adequately recorded.
‘It’s very unlikely that samples were discarded in general waste as this would be completely outside routine laboratory practice.
‘Importantly, no Hendra or Lyssavirus cases have been detected among humans in Queensland over the past five years, and there have been no reports of Hantavirus infections in humans ever in .’