ArticleBMC medicine2013
Containing the accidental laboratory escape of potential pandemic influenza viruses.
Article in BMC medicine, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Modeling the effects of routine screening for accidental lab-acquired infections on the risk of potential pandemic pathogen escape from high-biosafety research facilities.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2026Article
- Assessing global pandemic risks from emerging infectious diseases and high containment laboratory leaks: A country-level spatial network SIR model analysis.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2025Article
- Bridging biosafety and biosecurity gaps: DURC and ePPP policy insights from U.S. institutions.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2024Article
- The Waiver of Patent Protections for COVID-19 Vaccines During the Ongoing Pandemic and the Conspiracy Theories: Lights and Shadows of an Issue on the Ground.Frontiers in medicine · 2021Article
- Assessment of biorisk management systems in high containment laboratories, 18 countries in Europe, 2016 and 2017.Euro surveillance : bulletin Europeen sur les maladies transmissibles = European communicable disease bulletin · 2020Article
- Data-driven generation of spatio-temporal routines in human mobility.Data mining and knowledge discovery · 2018Article
- Detecting a Surprisingly Low Transmission Distance in the Early Phase of the 2009 Influenza Pandemic.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Host outdoor exposure variability affects the transmission and spread of Zika virus: Insights for epidemic control.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2017Article
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- Effectiveness of contact investigations for tuberculosis control in Arkansas.Journal of theoretical biology · 2015Article
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- Evaluating vaccination strategies for reducing infant respiratory syncytial virus infection in low-income settings.BMC medicine · 2015Article
- Spatiotemporal spread of the 2014 outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Liberia and the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions: a computational modelling analysis.The Lancet. Infectious diseases · 2015Article
- Studies on influenza virus transmission between ferrets: the public health risks revisited.mBio · 2015Article
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- The role of different social contexts in shaping influenza transmission during the 2009 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2014Article
- Ethical alternatives to experiments with novel potential pandemic pathogens.PLoS medicine · 2014Article
- The consequences of a lab escape of a potential pandemic pathogen.Frontiers in public health · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe recent work on the modified H5N1 has stirred an intense debate on the risk associated with the accidental release from biosafety laboratory of potential pandemic pathogens. Here, we assess the risk that the accidental escape of a novel transmissible influenza strain would not be contained in the local community.
methodsWe develop here a detailed agent-based model that specifically considers laboratory workers and their contacts in microsimulations of the epidemic onset. We consider the following non-pharmaceutical interventions: isolation of the laboratory, laboratory workers' household quarantine, contact tracing of cases and subsequent household quarantine of identified secondary cases, and school and workplace closure both preventive and reactive.
resultsModel simulations suggest that there is a non-negligible probability (5% to 15%), strongly dependent on reproduction number and probability of developing clinical symptoms, that the escape event is not detected at all. We find that the containment depends on the timely implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions and contact tracing and it may be effective (>90% probability per event) only for pathogens with moderate transmissibility (reproductive number no larger than R₀ = 1.5). Containment depends on population density and structure as well, with a probability of giving rise to a global event that is three to five times lower in rural areas.
conclusionsResults suggest that controllability of escape events is not guaranteed and, given the rapid increase of biosafety laboratories worldwide, this poses a serious threat to human health. Our findings may be relevant to policy makers when designing adequate preparedness plans and may have important implications for determining the location of new biosafety laboratories worldwide.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.