Australian Lab Misplaced Over 300 Deadly Virus Samples

A research lab in Queensland, Australia, seems to have misplaced a bunch of deadly virus samples. Whoopsie! A little more concerning is the fact that this breach originally happened back in 2021, wasn’t even noticed until August 2023, and is only just now being made public.

Some of the over 300 virus samples that have gone missing include some pretty deadly stuff like hantavirus, Hendra virus, and lyssavirus. If you’ve never heard of those, they’re all viruses carried by bats and rats that can kill humans. Despite a bunch of deadly viruses vanishing two years ago, officials say there is no immediate risk.

The good news is that if the virus samples were mishandled in any way they would become noninfectious pretty quickly since they would rapidly degrade outside of low-temperature freezers. If someone stole one and kept it in their hot-ass car for a bit instead of immediately putting it in a freezer, for instance, it would be rendered inert. For now, that’s just wishful thinking since officials have no idea what happened to them.

The only thing they know about the missing viruses is that the incident occurred when a freezer storing the virus samples broke. How, specifically, they went missing after that is anyone’s guess. Maybe they were lost in transport or maybe someone accidentally threw them away or maybe they were stolen by an international terrorist organization that’s going to hold the Super Bowl hostage until their demands are met but luckily the only guy who can stop them is on the field disguised as a linebacker.

Government officials say they have launched an investigation into the disappearance of the viruses from the state-run public health virology laboratory in Queensland.