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+--- Thread: "Biological Chernobyl": when a deadly infectious disease broke out from a lab in 1979 (/thread-13741.html)
"Biological Chernobyl": when a deadly infectious disease broke out from a lab in 1979 - C C - Feb 28, 2023
https://www.iflscience.com/-biological-chernobyl-when-a-deadly-infectious-disease-broke-out-from-a-soviet-lab-in-1979-67737
EXCERPTS: In 1979, a deadly pathogen really did leak out from a lab, killing at least 66 people and many animals nearby. Sometimes known as the "biological Chernobyl", the disaster was covered up by the Soviet authorities, with the truth only emerging to the rest of the world in the 1990s.
[...] Though medical files of infected patients had been destroyed during the cover-up, a team of investigators was able to secure pathologist notes from the autopsies of 42 people, giving their age, when their symptoms started, when they were admitted, and when they died. As well as this, they had access to 110 hospital records showing addresses and names of patients screened for anthrax poisoning, 48 of whom then died of the disease.
Using these records and interviews with survivors and surviving family members, the team placed the probable place at time of infection for each patient over a map of the city. It created an almost-comical conical shape, emitting from the lab itself and spreading south east.
The team, publishing their research in Science, put the outbreak down to a single release of an aerosol anthrax pathogen.
"We conclude that the outbreak resulted from the windborne spread of an aerosol of anthrax pathogen, that the source was at the military microbiology facility, and that the escape of pathogen occurred during the day on Monday, 2 April," the team wrote in their discussion.
[...] The Soviets, though banned like all others who signed up to the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, continued the production of anthrax that could be weaponized. President Boris Yeltsin later admitted that the military was to blame for the incident, which he helped to cover up as the top official in the region... (MORE - missing details)