The National Defense Medical Center is planing to spend nearly NT$900 million (US$32.23 million) on building a new biosafety level 4 laboratory, which it yesterday said would be a leading facility in the Asia-Pacific region to combat infectious diseases when construction is finished in five years.
The center made the announcement at news conference hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taipei yesterday.
The ministry, which in June last year set up the Research Center for Epidemic Prevention Science with a budget of about NT$185 million, would spend another NT$600 million from next year to 2025 on developing new techniques to bolster the nation’s responses to emerging diseases, Department of Life Sciences Director-General Chen Hong-chen (陳鴻震) said.
Supported by the Ministry of National Defense’s Medical Affairs Bureau, the center has been playing a key role in monitoring and preventing outbreaks of highly infectious diseases, such as hanta hemorrhagic fever or Ebola, center president Cha Tai-lung (查岱龍) said, without elaborating on its role prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The center is the only entity in Taiwan with biosafety level 2, 3 and 4 laboratories, Cha said, adding that its main role is to cultivate high-protection laboratory talent.
Its tasks include handling SARS-CoV-2 samples, genetic samples of non-human primates and training animals for use in medical experiments, such as ferrets and mice, he added.
With the science ministry’s support, the center has developed several platforms for identifying SARS-CoV-2 variants, and testing for vaccines’ geometric mean titers and medicine efficacy, Cha said.
With the support of the defense ministry, the center is planning to build a new biosafety level 4 laboratory for nearly NT$900 million, which would become a leading facility in the Asia-Pacific region, he said.
The new facility, which would cover about 600m2, would be build in a mountainous area of New Taipei City’s Sansia District (三峽), near the center’s Institute of Preventive Medicine, he said.
The budget plan had been approved by the Legislative Yuan a few years ago — before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out — as the new lab is not primarily part of the nation’s COVID-19 prevention architecture, another center official said.
The center’s existing level 4 lab would be decommissioned once the new one is operational, they said.
The new lab’s safety specifications would be based on Canadian standards, which are stricter than in most other countries, the person said.
The bidding process for the lab is still under way, they said.
Building such a high-tech lab might have been a sensitive matter before the pandemic broke out, but since then, a larger focus has been placed on transparency and quick reporting on pathogens, they said.
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