Researchers have studied some terrible viruses, including Ebola, anthrax and Marburg. However, according to the institute, the fire did not affect the building where these viruses were stored.
In Vector's Russian translation statement, the laboratory said that during the maintenance of the so-called health examination room, a gas cylinder exploded on the fifth floor of the six-story reinforced concrete laboratory. The statement said: "There is no research on biological substances on human bodies, and the relevant question is: Will smallpox recur?" According to the Los Angeles Times in 2006, during the Cold War, Vector once owned about 100 buildings, even its own cemetery. It is reported that a scientist there was injected with the deadly Marburg virus and was buried there. The visit to the laboratory shows that these scientists are no longer "engaged in aggressive activities". Today, scientists there have conducted biomedical research on the spread of various infectious diseases, vaccine development and virus genome sequencing. "Responding to the global threat of infection". According to the institute's website,
Although outside scientists can't determine the exact location of the explosion and fire, David Evans, an expert in this field, said, "This doesn't sound like a place to store smallpox virus, nor does it sound like a place where research is being carried out." The Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology of university of alberta is one of the experts who study smallpox and other poxviruses in the world.
Even if the fire engulfs the virus storage facilities, the harm to human health will be very low. "Generally speaking, fire is unlikely to cause infection," Evans told Life Science.
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Another virologist agreed that Grant mcfadden, director of the Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccine and Virus Treatment at Arizona State University, told Life Science in an email, "Incineration may destroy all these viruses, including smallpox," he added. "Fire is a risk for any biological laboratory, but it is not a high threat to the spread of live viruses, because most viruses are not well stored in the repository. This is why they need to be kept in a deep-frozen incubator for a long time.
Evans said, in fact, these virus samples were kept in a metal refrigerator, and the temperature reached a numbing Fahrenheit-1 12 degrees (-80 degrees Celsius).
"Viruses are fragile things," Evans said. "The nearby fire will melt the contents first, and then burn them." The main problem of any biological collection is that if the power supply is interrupted for any time, the sample will be heated and melted in its storage bottle, and together with the virus, it may lead to the loss of infectivity.
He stressed that those freezers will definitely have mechanical and electrical backup power.
Another laboratory, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, announced the eradication of smallpox in 1980, and was authorized by the World Health Organization in Georgia.
The nine deadliest viruses on earth, the five most terrible diseases that broke out in the last century, and 10 cross-species fatal diseases were first published in Life Science magazine.