What Should Happen After a Lab Exposure?
A researcher at a Siberian plague institute has died, and the cause is still disputed. What should happen when a laboratory exposure may have become a public health event?
At the end of September a researcher at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute in Siberia was hospitalized with severe pneumonia and died in early October. Russian media reported that she had broken a tube of live plague bacteria days earlier. Russia's health agency, Rospotrebnadzor, describes the cause as pneumonia of unknown etiology and says it found no laboratory accident (Moscow Times). On 6 October it said no plague had been detected among her contacts. As of 7 October, no authority has confirmed or ruled out plague as her cause of death.
The World Health Organization says it began monitoring on 2 October after media reports, contacted Russian authorities under the International Health Regulations on 3 October, and rates the risk as moderate to low in Irkutsk and low for Russia as a whole (UN Geneva). Under those Regulations, any event involving pneumonic plague must be formally assessed, and a qualifying event must be notified to WHO within 24 hours of that assessment (WHO guidance on IHR Annex 2). WHO's standard measures for a suspected pneumonic case include isolation, monitoring of close contacts, preventive antibiotics for those contacts, and laboratory confirmation (WHO plague fact sheet).
What is poorly measured is not this one case but the pattern behind it: how often laboratory exposures happen, and how many are formally reported.
This SciPoll asks the SciPinion expert community what should happen when a laboratory exposure may have become a public health event, whether this case is following the established playbook, and how often such incidents arise in your own work. If you have not worked in a laboratory, the questions on disclosure and response still apply to you.
The World Health Organization says it began monitoring on 2 October after media reports, contacted Russian authorities under the International Health Regulations on 3 October, and rates the risk as moderate to low in Irkutsk and low for Russia as a whole (UN Geneva). Under those Regulations, any event involving pneumonic plague must be formally assessed, and a qualifying event must be notified to WHO within 24 hours of that assessment (WHO guidance on IHR Annex 2). WHO's standard measures for a suspected pneumonic case include isolation, monitoring of close contacts, preventive antibiotics for those contacts, and laboratory confirmation (WHO plague fact sheet).
What is poorly measured is not this one case but the pattern behind it: how often laboratory exposures happen, and how many are formally reported.
This SciPoll asks the SciPinion expert community what should happen when a laboratory exposure may have become a public health event, whether this case is following the established playbook, and how often such incidents arise in your own work. If you have not worked in a laboratory, the questions on disclosure and response still apply to you.