http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/health/cdc-ebola-error-in-lab-may-have-exposed-technician-to-virus.html 2014-12-24 22:49:55 C.D.C. Ebola Error in Lab May Have Exposed Technician to Virus The agency said a lab had sent the wrong samples, possibly containing live virus instead of inactivated samples, to another lab down the hall. === A laboratory mistake at the The error occurred on Monday when a high-security lab at the C.D.C. in Atlanta, working with Ebola virus from the epidemic in West Africa, sent samples that should have been inactivated to another C.D.C. laboratory, which was down the hall. But the lab sent out the wrong samples, ones that had not been inactivated and that may have contained the live virus. The second lab was not equipped to handle the live virus. The technician who worked with the samples wore gloves and a gown, but no mask, and may have been exposed. The error was discovered on Tuesday. The accident is especially troubling because dangerous samples of “I’m working on it until the issue is resolved,” the agency’s director, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said in an interview in July. Under In the June incident, C.D.C. scientists sent anthrax samples, supposedly killed, to laboratories that were not equipped to handle dangerous pathogens. But the bacteria turned out to be live, because a deactivating technique too weak to wipe out anthrax spores had been used. Dozens of employees were offered The head of the laboratory that shipped the bacteria resigned a few weeks after the mistakes came to light. Although C.D.C. officials gave no reason for his resignation and said it was voluntary, they had previously indicated that they feared workers in that laboratory had grown careless because of lax supervision. In another blunder, a Although the flu accident occurred in May, senior C.D.C. officials were not told about it until July 7, and Dr. Frieden did not hear about it until two days after that. He said in an interview in July that he was “stunned and appalled” by the incident. The mistakes led the C.D.C. to appoint a The special pathogens branch, where the Ebola accident occurred on Monday, soon received permission to start sending out infectious agents again. The accident is being investigated, an agency spokeswoman, Barbara Reynolds, said. “We’ll learn from this mistake as we’ve learned from the others,” she said.