Russian authorities announced Tuesday that a gas explosion damaged a section of a medical facility in Siberia that houses live samples of viruses such as Ebola and smallpox, but added that a biomedical emergency did not need to be declared.
The explosion reportedly took place Monday at the State Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector. The 6-storey structure made of concrete and steel is located in the isolated Siberian city of Kotsovo, near the city of Novosibirsk, 600 miles from the border with Mongolia.
Vector, founded in 1974 by the Soviet state to study mass infectious agents that could be used to build biological weapons, remains today one of the largest virological research centers in the world, specializing in the treatment of some of the deadliest infectious diseases, such as Ebola, tularemia and swine flu. The Vector facility is believed to be one of two locations in the world that hosts live samples of the smallpox virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the city of Atlanta, United States, is also believed to host ca, mpions of the virus.
According to a statement released Tuesday by the Russian state news agency TASS, the explosion was caused by a gas cylinder used by workers who were carrying out repairs in a health inspection room located on the fifth floor of the Vector facility resulting in injuries to a employee.
At the time of the explosion there was no work in progress with biological agents and therefore it would not have been necessary to declare a state of emergency and therefore no biological threat warnings would have been issued.