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 The Pentagon said a total of 11 states, two more than it first
acknowledged, received "suspect samples," as did Australia and South
Korea. It had previously only identified a foreign shipment to a
U.S. air base south of Seoul.
"There is no known risk to the general public and an extremely low
risk to lab workers," the Pentagon said in a statement.
Still, in a sign the Pentagon was still coming to grips with the
extent of the problem, it advised all laboratories for now to stop
working with any "inactive" samples sent from the Defense
Department.
To date, the United States has acknowledged that four U.S. civilians
have begun taking preventive measures that usually include the
anthrax vaccine, antibiotics or both.
Twenty-two people at the base in South Korea were also given
precautionary medical measures although none of them has shown signs
of exposure, officials said.
The suspected live samples identified so far all appear to trace
back to a U.S. Army base in Utah, the Dugway Proving Ground, one of
the military labs responsible for inactivation and shipping of
biological material.
The U.S. military disclosed earlier this week that suspected live
samples sourced to Dugway were traced going to nine U.S. states and
a U.S. air base in South Korea. A U.S. official said those shipments
took place between March 2014 to April 2015 before being discovered
this month.
On Friday, U.S. officials said the suspect sample sent to Australia
came from a 2008 batch from Dugway.
In all, a total of 24 laboratories received the suspect samples, the
Pentagon said.
The discovery has raised alarms in Congress.
The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate homeland security
committee wrote to Defense Secretary Ash Carter, saying the incident
"may have threatened countless human lives and caused millions of
dollars in damage."
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The Pentagon said Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for
acquisition, technology and logistics, would lead the Pentagon's
review, which included an examination of procedures for inactivating
anthrax.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already
begun an investigation.
The disclosure comes 11 months after the CDC, one of the
government's top civilian labs, similarly mishandled anthrax.
Researchers at a lab designed to handle extremely dangerous
pathogens sent what they believed were killed samples of anthrax to
another CDC lab, one with fewer safeguards and therefore not
authorized to work with live anthrax.
Scores of CDC employees could have been exposed to the live anthrax,
but none became ill.
That incident and a similar one last spring, in which CDC scientists
shipped what they thought was a benign form of bird flu but which
was actually a highly virulent strain, led U.S. lawmakers to fault a
"dangerous pattern" of safety lapses at government labs.
(Additional reporting by Sharon Begley in New York; Editing by Susan
Heavey, Will Dunham and Richard Chang)
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