Warning over worldwide boom in labs designed to handle deadliest pathogens

There were fears today about the boom in laboratories designed to tackle the world’s most dangerous pathogens in the wake of Covid.

There are now more than 100 facilities worldwide tasked with storing and experimenting with viruses such as Ebola and bird flu.

But leading scientists are concerned about the lab’s lack of oversight, saying lax biosafety regulations are a particular problem in Asia.

A lab leak is one of the leading theories about the origins of Covid, with China accused of covering up the possibility that the virus escaped from a high-security location in Wuhan, the city where the pandemic began.

The coalition of British and American scientists behind today’s report claimed there are now 69 Biosafety Level (BSL) 4 facilities.

This map shows all known ‘BSL-3+’ labs that appear in the report. It also shows countries color coded according to how scientists rate their overall biohazard management, green countries are good, yellow are average and red countries are performing poorly. Gray does not indicate rank. Some planned labs have not been included because their exact location in the country has not been announced

This is up from 59 just two years ago.

Famous BSL-4 labs include Porton Down here in the UK and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, at the center of the Covid lab theory.

Experiments in these labs may involve what some commentators consider gain-of-function, a wildly controversial branch of science that attempts to manipulate pathogens. Some can be more deadly.

About 75 percent of current BSL-4 labs are located in urban areas.

The report warns that this could “exacerbate” the potential impact of an accidental release, with the labs containing pathogens such as arbor pathogens such as smallpox, Ebola and Lassa fever.

Experts are now also very concerned about the emergence of a new kind of lab they call BSL-3+, with 57 identified around the world.

Most are in Europe, with 80 percent in urban areas.

These facilities conduct research on viruses such as avian flu, without the stricter biosecurity procedures of BSL-4 laboratories.

In addition, as more BSL-3+ laboratories are located in urban environments with dense populations, the risk of a potential leak of pathogens increases.

Pictured: Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fears that the next pandemic will be caused by a leak from a lab come as more and more attention turns to the Wuhan lab as a possible starting point for Covid

These tables show the number of BSL-4 and BSL-3+ labs, both open and under construction on each continent

This chart shows rules and restrictions for research that can make high-risk pathogens more deadly. Only Canada, the US and the UK scored 50 or more

This chart shows the countries with high-risk operational or planned labs, ranked by the strength of their biorisk management policies that could prevent a deadly pathogen from being released or developed. The lower the score, the fewer or weaker the measures

The findings come from the Global BioLabs Report 2023, released by Kings College London.

Dr. Filippa Lentzos, an expert in international security at King’s College London, said the explosion of labs is concerning, especially in parts of Asia, given the general lack of biorisk management policies in the region.

She said: ‘We are seeing a rapid expansion of maximum containment laboratories in Asia, but many of these countries are performing poorly on biohazard management.

“There has been a global explosion in the construction of laboratories handling dangerous pathogens.

“But that was not accompanied by sufficient biosecurity and biosecurity supervision.”

Labs that use pathogens in research must meet a certain standard of biosafety regulations to work with them.

The more dangerous the pathogen, the higher the BSL level required.

For example, BSL-4 labs may have armed guards, telling researchers to wear fully enclosed PPE suits during experiments.

But unlike BSL4 facilities, there is no requirement under the Biological Weapons Convention for confidence building measures to declare BSL3+ laboratories and their activities.

This means there is “no evidence” that the biosecurity measures in these new laboratories are adequate for the research they are conducting, the report’s authors warned.

They can therefore self-impose higher biosecurity measures than standard BSL-3 laboratories, such as additional training and equipment, but this is not standardized.

The report found that the most common pathogen studied in BSL-3+ was avian influenza, which has been tipped by multiple scientists as capable of causing the next pandemic.

Some are also feared that they are researching job gains.

Overall, 40 percent of the 57 BSL-3+ labs laboratories identified in the report were government-owned.

Another 40 percent was owned by universities, with the rest split evenly between private companies and the military.

Dr. Gregory Koblentz, co-project leader of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in the US, said: “We urgently need coordinated international action to address rising biohazards.”

The team behind the new report previously named and shamed the countries with the most lax rules on laboratories hosting the world’s most dangerous pathogens.

They found that Saudi Arabia, Gabon and Ivory Coast were at the bottom of the list in terms of safety standards in BSL-4 laboratories.

Canada, the US, Australia and the UK generally had some of the best standards, according to infectious disease experts who ranked all known facilities around the world.