MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Killer flu frenzy

Countries around the world were destroying vials of a pandemic flu strain yesterday which were sent to thousands of labs as part of a routine test kit, risking a global flu epidemic.

The UN healthy agency said Canada, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore had already destroyed their samples. Taiwan and Germany also announced yesterday they had destroyed all their vials.

Nearly 5,000 labs in 18 countries or territories ? mostly in the United States but also in Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Bermuda, Chile, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Taiwan ? received vials from a US company that supplies kits used for internal quality control tests.

"The goal is to make an inventory tomorrow," said the WHO's influenza chief, Klaus Stohr. "We are relatively confident considering the response we received from the ministries of health that the international laboratories will be done on Friday. We will see how far the American laboratories have come."

Countries were urged by the World Health Organization to destroy samples of the dangerous virus because of the slight but real risk it could trigger a global outbreak.

The WHO said governments of all the countries involved have the addresses of the laboratories which received the test kits are following up on the destruction of the samples.

In Belgium, government spokesman Karim Ibourki said the strain was sent to two labs: one to the Middelheim university hospital in Antwerp and one to a NATO lab.

The germ, the 1957 pandemic influenza strain, killed between 1 million and 4 million people. Stohr did not rule out the possibility that the virus might already have broken loose, but said it was unlikely.

"We cannot be sure the virus has not gone out, but from the surveillance it would clearly indicate that (if) it has gone out, it has not caused what we are afraid of ? namely large outbreaks or spreading to any significant extent," Stohr said. "We think (any) outbreaks would stick out like a sore thumb." Stohr said the WHO has asked all ministries of health to report back on any outbreak of unknown source. Stohr said the company which sent out the virus samples ? Meridian Bioscience Inc. of Newtown, Ohio - abided by current US regulations.