Academia Sinica yesterday reported five breaches of safety protocols at one of its laboratories, which is most likely the source of a local COVID-19 case last week, the first in more than a month.
Punishment for personnel found to be at fault would be dealt with according to the law, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).
The case is a woman in her 20s, who worked as a research assistant at Academia Sinica’s Genomics Research Center until Dec. 3. She was bitten twice by lab mice infected with COVID-19 in a biosafety level 3 lab — first in October and again last month.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The CECC on Saturday reported that genome sequencing results and preliminary environmental surface testing suggested that the woman likely contracted the disease at the lab, not in the local community.
CECC and Academia Sinica officials were asked to report on the incident at the Legislative Yuan yesterday morning.
Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said that a preliminary investigation found five major safety flaws at the lab, including failure to report the biting incidents in accordance with the institute’s environmental, health and safety regulations, and the lab’s standard operating procedures (SOP).
Contamination in the lab was likely caused by users’ failure to comply with SOPs, including handling infected mice only inside a biological safety cabinet and following the correct sequence in removing personal protective equipment, he said.
The research assistant was still in training and did not seem to have received adequate safety training, Liao said, adding that there was no lab manager or senior staff in the central control room monitoring the users when they were conducting experiments.
The center and the institute should enhance supervision, as well as review their supervision mechanism, he said.
Liao said that when the woman was first bitten by a mouse, she reported the incident to the lab manager, but the manger deemed it a low-risk incident and did not report it to the Genomics Research Center’s management or the institute’s biosafety committee, but only asked the woman to monitor her health.
After the woman was bitten a second time, she did not report the incident.
Based on the lab’s surveillance camera footage, three people were conducting an experiment on Nov. 24, and the woman appeared to be handling a mouse infected with the Alpha variant of SARS-CoV-2 and another one with the Delta variant, he said.
That appears to contradict statements made by people at the lab and needs further clarification, he added.
The footage also showed the woman handling the mice outside a biological safety cabinet, and that only one among the three people removed their protective gear according to the SOP when leaving the lab that day.
Asked if the personnel at fault would face punishments for not following the regulations or SOP, Chen said it would depend on the results of the investigation, but if some personnel, regardless of their position or rank, were found to be at fault, they would be punished according to the law.
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