So yeah, this sounds about like the first two minutes of a post-apocalypic movie….
…The hospital has been suspected as the site of the monkeys’ exposure last fall to the bacterium, Burkholderia pseudomallei, which is not found in the United States.
Despite several weeks of investigation, officials still don’t how the bacteria escaped a secure lab elsewhere at the 500-acre research complex, nor do they know the extent of the contamination — including whether bacteria have colonized soil or water in the huge outdoor primate breeding colony cages on the property. The outdoor monkey cages are near a school, homes, wetlands and a river.
The monkeys were not part of experiments and should have never crossed paths with the bacterium, which can cause serious and fatal illness in humans and animals that may not develop for days to years after exposure. The bacterium is highly regulated as a research material because of its potential to be used in a bioweapon. The bacterium is found primarily in soil and water in Southeast Asia and northern Australia.
The CDC has said that the strain Tulane was studying in its high-containment laboratory in Covington, La., is known as Strain 1026b. It was originally recovered from a rice farmer who was sickened in Thailand in 1993. Tulane’s laboratory strain is identical to the strain of bacteria that sickened the first two of the primate center’s macaques last November, the CDC has said.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…