Vials labeled 'smallpox' found at vaccine research facility in Pennsylvania, CDC says

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: 6ABC

PHILADELPHIA -- Several vials labeled "smallpox" have been found at a vaccine research facility in Pennsylvania, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. "There is no indication that anyone has been exposed to the small number of frozen vials," the CDC said in a statement emailed to CNN.

"The frozen vials labeled 'Smallpox' were incidentally discovered by a laboratory worker while cleaning out a freezer in a facility that conducts vaccine research in Pennsylvania. CDC, its Administration partners, and law enforcement are investigating the matter and the vials' contents appear intact," the CDC added. "The laboratory worker who discovered the vials was wearing gloves and a face mask. We will provide further details as they are available."

According to Yahoo News, which cited an alert sent to Department of Homeland Security leadership, the vials were reportedly found in a freezer Monday night at a Merck facility outside Philadelphia. The closest Merck facility to Philadelphia is North Wales, Pa., although Action News cannot confirm there are questionable vials inside the building.

Smallpox, also known as variola, was declared eradicated in 1980 by the World Health Organization after a concerted global vaccination effort. Before that, the virus, which passes easily from person to person, infected 15 million people a year and killed about 30% of them. The last known outbreak in the US was in 1947.

Read more: https://6abc.com/smallpox-vials-cdc-vaccine-research-pennsylvania-world-health-organization/11245077/

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They were doing a local breaking here in Philly with this news. And yup, I now where that Merck campus is.

[Sgent]

1. That's scary

It seems there are at least 5 vials of possible virus -- 10 were labeled vaccine and 5 were labeled smallpox. I'm guessing they have been sitting in Merck's freezers since the '70s and everyone figured it would be easier to do nothing --- kinda like the gallons of mercury at my former high school.

If anything, this shows that eliminating the official repositories in Atlanta and Russia probably won't eliminate the virus from existence. Either another lab will pop up, or some will be reclaimed from a corpse or other repository.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. GALLONS of mercury????

Lord. That stuff is lethal or at least highly toxic. Runs in the family since we're kind of descended from 1800s sulfur miners, where mercury occurs naturally. I think genetically our bodies conserve it.

[Sgent]

26. Yep

I was the lab assistant when we changed schools and I had to handle all that crap. The lab had been stocked by NASA or TVA in the 60's to make us more sciency. The same school (different lab / teacher) I anesthetized myself with ether (no hood) during a fruit fly experiment gone wrong. This was the mid 90's.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Oh yeah

I expect a number of research labs (and that might even include at universities and teaching hospital systems) may have some "lost or misplaced" vials way way way in the back of some cold storage - maybe even in a box where the label disintegrated or the container was misidentified (if it had multiples virus samples in it) - and it were just left like that.

As a scientist myself, I actually would prefer that some tiny sample remain under very very strict security (or find some way to completely genetically map it if that hasn't happened yet with the latest tech), so that should something wild happen way in the future, where it might be needed to come up with some new vaccine or at least positively ID it if someone contracted it, you have a "reference standard".

[alittlelark]

2. Very scary.

Most ppl under 50 r not vaccinated for it.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. That's a nugget

I mean to say that I recall MMR DPT, but don't ever recall smallpox being part of vaccinations that were mentioned when I was a kid, and yes I'm over 50. It says online the US stopped smallpox vaxxing in 1972. But how would I know? There are no records, or at least I don't have any.

[alittlelark]

5. if you have a small roundish scar on an upper arm you were vaxxed.

[tblue37]

25. My smallpox vaccine scar has disappeared. It was a different kind of scar, though:

I think the vaccine I got was administered by scratching the skin rather than by injection.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. This lovely scar (on my arm too)

If you got one of these on the upper arm, then you were vaxxed for smallpox!



(mine is about a 3/4" wide circle towards the top back of the upper left arm)

[Arkansas Granny]

9. My oldest son, born 1967, was vaxxed for smallpox. My daughter, born 1969, was not.

When the time came, her pediatrician advised me to wait pending the outcome of attempts to make smallpox vaccination non-mandatory.

IIRC, my two younger sons were vaccinated when they joined the military.

[rickford66]

8. I was vaccinated for small pox three times

Four years old 1950 for school. 17 in 1964 for college. 22 in 1969 for boot camp.

[Karma13612]

10. Born in 1954

Small pox scar-check
Polio on a purple colored sugar cube-check

All done in grade school IIRC

[yellowdogintexas]

23. born in 1948

Smallpox scar on my thigh (per insistence of our mom who had a scar the size of a quarter on her thigh) My sisters were both vaxxed for smallpox (they were born in 1953 & 1961) When I traveled to Germany in 1960 I had to be revaxxed for smallpox (and also get typhus shots which made me sick for two days)

I was in the first round of polio vaccines in second grade. It was a massive and well organized program by the county health department. By the time my youngest sister came along the sugar cube was the method.

[sinkingfeeling]

11. My son has been saying an enemy could wipe out the USA by

reintroducing smallpox here. With the current 30% against vaccinations, it wouldn't take long.

[Irish_Dem]

14. Biowarfare is risky with so much global travel?

The enemy would have to secretly vaccinate its own population first.

[The Jungle 1]

12. Worked in that town for 15 years.

They should change the name of North Wales to Merckville. This research and production site has been here for decades and it is huge. It is a small town all by itself.
The Philly burbs are the Silicone valley of Pharmaceuticals. There are numerous large research and development sites in the area. They are a major employer and provide great benefit to the community. I just wonder what else is hiding in their freezers?

[BumRushDaShow]

15. I live about 12 miles from North Wales

and practically live in Assi Plaza there.

GSK has a HG building in Philly (previously downtown, now moved to the Naval Business Center in South Philly), McNeil is in Ft. Washington, about 7 miles away from me, and then you had the old Warner-Lambert (now owned by Pfizer) and J&J out in Litiz.

[The Jungle 1]

19. I am 15 miles north of North Wales

We might be neighbors.

[BumRushDaShow]

20. I'm south of there in the city

but am up and down 309 all the time (although not as much anymore with the pandemic).

In fact, it was in North Wales in that parking lot of Assi Plaza where I saw my first lanternfly during the summer of 2019. It was sitting on the tire of the car parked next to mine.

I was with one of my sisters and yelling and pointing to show her what one looked like since we kept hearing about them but hadn't seen any "in person" before then. Wanted to smack it but it was on someone else's car and it hopped away as I approached it.

By the summer of 2020, were were inundated here in Philly, but fortunately this past summer, there were WAY fewer of them (could have been partly due to an icy winter).

[3Hotdogs]

13. When smallpox was eliminated, there was discussion of maintaining a small collection of samples

for research and also about the moral obligation of not eliminating any form of life.

I don't recall how that worked out.

[BumRushDaShow]

18. Yup

I remember the debate. I think most "known" sources were eliminated but obviously there are probably vials still scattered all around the world. There was a big hullaboo about 7 years ago when some was found in an old FDA lab at NIH - https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/s0708-NIH.html

CDC Media Statement on Newly Discovered Smallpox Specimens
Media Statement

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Contact: Media Relations, Office of Communication
[phone]

On July 1, 2014, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) notified the appropriate regulatory agency, the Division of Select Agents and Toxins (DSAT) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that employees discovered vials labeled ”variola,” commonly known as smallpox, in an unused portion of a storage room in a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laboratory located on the NIH Bethesda campus.

The laboratory was among those transferred from NIH to FDA in 1972, along with the responsibility for regulating biologic products. The FDA has operated laboratories located on the NIH campus since that time. Scientists discovered the vials while preparing for the laboratory’s move to the FDA’s main campus.

The vials appear to date from the 1950s. Upon discovery, the vials were immediately secured in a CDC-registered select agent containment laboratory in Bethesda.

There is no evidence that any of the vials labeled variola has been breached, and onsite biosafety personnel have not identified any infectious exposure risk to lab workers or the public.

Late on July 7, the vials were transported safely and securely with the assistance of federal and local law enforcement agencies to CDC’s high-containment facility in Atlanta. Overnight PCR testing done by CDC in the BSL-4 lab confirmed the presence of variola virus DNA. Additional testing of the variola samples is under way to determine if the material in the vials is viable (i.e., can grow in tissue culture). This testing could take up to 2 weeks. After completion of this testing, the samples will be destroyed.

By international agreement, there are two official World Health Organization (WHO)-designated repositories for smallpox: CDC in Atlanta, Georgia and the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR) in Novosibirsk, Russia. The WHO oversees the inspection of these smallpox facilities and conducts periodic reviews to certify the repositories for safety and security.

CDC has notified WHO about the discovery, and WHO has been invited to participate in the investigation. If viable smallpox is present, WHO will be invited to witness the destruction of these smallpox materials, as has been the precedent for other cases where smallpox samples have been found outside of the two official repositories.

DSAT, in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is actively investigating the history of how these samples were originally prepared and subsequently stored in the FDA laboratory.

###

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

They found that when CBER was in the process of moving to White Oak in Silver Spring.

[womanofthehills]

21. 7 yrs ago was when Obama called for an end to all gain of function research in US

Which made Ralph Baric of Univ of NC very upset. Trump in his second yr of office removed Obama’s restriction on gain of function research.

[twodogsbarking]

16. Let this be a reminder to clean out the freezer.

[Harker]

17. We must not allow a mineshaft gap! n/t

[twodogsbarking]

22. The CDC Biorepository has approximately 6.6 million biological and environmental samples.

[marie999]

24. I had so many smallpox vaccinations in the army I don't think the last couple did anything.

It seems every time I went to a new base they were giving smallpox vaccinations. On the last base, I told them and showed them my vaccination card that I was vaccinated 3 months ago. They gave me it anyway.

[roamer65]

27. Smallpox would make a significant dent in the population if reintroduced.

The population left would be a lot older, since most from 1972 and earlier were vaccinated.