What is Marburg virus disease? | The Week UK

Ghana has confirmed its first cases of the deadly Marburg virus, a highly infectious disease similar to Ebola, after two people who tested positive for the illness died earlier this month.

The two patients who died in hospital in the southern Ashanti region tested positive for the virus on 10 July, and have now been verified by a laboratory in Senegal, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Medical staff in Ghana have reported that 98 people are now under quarantine as suspected contact cases, although none has developed any symptoms so far according to WHO, which is supporting the country’s response to the outbreak.

“Health authorities have responded swiftly, getting a head start preparing for a possible outbreak,” said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa. “This is good because without immediate and decisive action, Marburg can easily get out of hand.”

What is Marburg virus?

The virus, which is similar to Ebola, is transmitted to people “from fruit bats and spreads between humans through the transmission of bodily fluids”, said the BBC. “It is a severe, often fatal illness,” the broadcaster added.

What are the symptoms?

Symptoms include:

headache

fever

muscle pains

vomiting blood

bleeding.

How is it treated?

No known treatment exists for Marburg virus disease (MVD), but doctors say drinking plenty of water and treating specific symptoms improves a patient’s chances of survival. The WHO is also “exploring treatments involving blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies”, according to ABC News.

How did it begin?

The first ever Marburg cases were in the German cities of Marburg and Frankfurt, and in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1967. Thirty-one people contracted the disease and seven died.

Since then, there have been a dozen major Marburg outbreaks, mostly in southern and eastern Africa, according to the WHO. Fatality rates have varied from 24% to 88% in past outbreaks depending on the virus strain and case management, with the average fatality rate for MVD being about 50%.

According to the global health agency, the initial outbreaks were “associated with laboratory work using African green monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops) imported from Uganda”.

There have subsequently been sporadic outbreaks in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.

The virus killed more than 200 people in Angola in 2005, the deadliest outbreak on record.

It is only the second time that MVD has been discovered in West Africa. Last year, one case was confirmed in Guinea, but the outbreak was declared over in September, five weeks after the case was identified, said the BBC.

Marburg virus: Ghana confirms its first outbreak of the deadly virus ...

(CNN) Ghana has confirmed its first two cases of the highly infectious Marburg virus disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Sunday in a statement.

The announcement comes after two unrelated patients from the southern Ashanti region of Ghana, both of whom later died, tested positive for the virus.

The patients had shown symptoms including diarrhea, fever, nausea, and vomiting, WHO said, adding that more than 90 contacts are being monitored.

Marburg is a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever in the same family as the better known Ebola virus disease and has a fatality ratio of up to 88%, according to WHO. "Illness begins abruptly, with high fever, severe headache, and malaise," it stated.

The virus is transmitted to humans from fruit bats and can then be spread human-to-human through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people or surfaces and materials contaminated with these fluids, WHO explained.

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Deadly Marburg virus confirmed in Guinea after Ebola outbreak ends

A man in Guinea has died from the highly infectious Marburg virus, which has sent more than 100 people into quarantine just months after the end of the country's Ebola outbreak.

The country's first case of the disease was discovered on Friday, according to the World Health Organization. The man first showed symptoms on July 25 and died eight days later. Tests after his death confirmed he was positive for Marburg.

Marburg is a highly contagious disease spread by bodily fluids with a fatality rate of up to 90% and is part of the same virus family as Ebola, according to WHO.

It was first recognized in 1967, and numerous outbreaks across the world have occurred since. The most notable outbreak occurred in Angola from 2004 to 2005, when 90% of the 252 people infected died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved to treat the virus.

In Guinea, health officials are trying to determine how many people were in close contact with the infected man. So far, 145 people have been identified and have been told to self-isolate.

More viruses? Scientists discover more than 30 viruses frozen in ice, most never seen before

The confirmed case comes months after the end of Guinea's Ebola outbreak in June. The region Gueckedou, where Marburg was confirmed, also was where cases of Ebola were discovered this year.

“We applaud the alertness and the quick investigative action by Guinea’s health workers. The potential for the Marburg virus to spread far and wide means we need to stop it in its tracks,” Matshidiso Moeti, WHO's regional director for Africa, said in a statement. “We are working with the health authorities to implement a swift response that builds on Guinea’s past experience and expertise in managing Ebola, which is transmitted in a similar way.”

How the man contracted the virus is unknown, but scientists from the CDC said in January that the virus was found in Egyptian rousette bats in Sierra Leone, which shares a border with Guinea.

Guinea is also experiencing one of its worst COVID-19 waves. As of Aug. 2, there were 1,159 confirmed cases, the most since the beginning of the pandemic, according to WHO.

Follow Jordan Mendoza on Twitter: @jord_mendoza.

Dallas hospital diagnoses first patient with Ebola

Liz Szabo

USA TODAY

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Tuesday the first case of Ebola in a critically ill patient diagnosed in a U.S. hospital.

The patient — who has been isolated since his symptoms were recognized — is an unnamed man in intensive care at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas.

Hospital workers noted his case because of his symptoms and recent travel history. It is not known whether he has infected others, although CDC officials are tracing his contacts.

The man left Liberia Sept. 19 and arrived in the USA the next day but had no symptoms when leaving Africa or arriving here, said Thomas Frieden, the CDC director. The patient became sick Sept. 24, and he sought care two days later. He was sent home but returned to a hospital and was admitted Sept. 28. Frieden did not reveal the man's nationality but said he came to the USA to visit relatives.

Frieden said there is no danger of the sort of widespread outbreak seen in West Africa.

"This is the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the U.S. and the first strain of this Ebola diagnosed outside of Africa," Frieden said. "I have no doubt that we will control this case of Ebola so that it does not spread widely in this country. It is certainly possible that someone who has had contact with this patient could develop Ebola, but there is no doubt in my mind that we will stop it here."

Ebola patients are contagious once they begin showing symptoms, such as fever, diarrhea and vomiting, Frieden said.

Someone with these symptoms could infect health care workers, such as people working in an emergency room. The virus is spread only through contact with bodily fluids, such as blood or vomit, says Brett Giroir, CEO at Texas A&M Health Science Center, an intensive care specialist.

Ebola does not spread through the air, like measles or the flu, said David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Because the man was not sick on the plane or in the airport, Frieden said he's not worried that others on his flight will become sick. Health officials are not contacting fellow passengers. "There is zero risk of transmission on the flight," Frieden said. "He was checked for fever before getting on the flight."

He said health officials are following a "handful" of contacts, including a few family members and friends. The man stayed with family, not at a hotel.

The Dallas Fire-Rescue crew that transported the Ebola patient on Sunday is now under quarantine. The city has activated its Emergency Operations Center on "Level 2: High Readiness" in response to Tuesday's developments, WFAA-TV reported.

"I have no doubt that we will stop this in its tracks," Frieden said, but as long as the epidemic is spreading out of control in West Africa, "we have to be on our guard."

Infectious disease experts agreed with Frieden that Ebola is unlikely to spread very far in the USA because of stringent infection control measures in place at American hospitals. There are no plans to transfer the patient to a specialized hospital with a biocontainment unit, Frieden said, noting that any hospital that has the ability to isolate a patient can treat someone with Ebola.

Frieden said there have been five cases of patients with similar hemorrhagic fevers in the USA, including Lassa fever and Marburg virus, and none of them infected anyone else.

"There is no cause for concern," says Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "The Ebola virus is not easily transmitted from person to person, and we have an outstanding infrastructure in place both to contain the virus and trace contacts. There will not be an Ebola epidemic in the United States."

Giroir noted that other Ebola patients who have been airlifted from West Africa to American hospitals have done well, at least partly because of the good intensive care provided.

"We need to take this extremely serious and with extraordinary care, but Ebola is able to be controlled with appropriate isolation and public health measures," Giroir says. The Dallas hospital is "an extraordinarily fine hospital with very capable physicians and staff."

Tuesday evening, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced plans to visit Dallas to evaluate the response to the Ebola situation.

Standard public health measures for Ebola include asking patients when they first fell ill and for the names of everyone with whom they've been in contact since then. Officials contact all those people and monitor anyone at risk for 21 days to see whether they develop symptoms of Ebola, Frieden said.

Patients who aren't sick by that point aren't considered at risk for Ebola. Patients who develop fevers are isolated immediately and given treatment, Frieden said.

Those time-consuming but low-tech methods were used to contain the Ebola outbreak in Nigeria. The CDC reported today that the Ebola outbreak in Nigeria appears to be over after 20 confirmed or probable cases and eight deaths. An Ebola outbreak in Senegal has been successfully confined to one patient, who traveled to that country from Guinea but didn't infect anyone in Senegal.

Ebola has infected 6,553 people and has killed 3,083 in the three countries hit hardest by the epidemic — Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia — the World Health Organization says. The number of cases has doubled every three weeks, and the CDC estimates that the disease could affect up to 1.4 million people by January if it's not quickly put under control.

Three Americans have survived Ebola after getting intensive care in specialized biocontainment units in the USA.

Physician Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol were treated and released from Emory University Hospital, and physician Richard Sacra was treated and discharged from Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. Writebol and Sacra served in Monrovia, Liberia, with missionary group SIM USA. Brantly worked with missionary group Samaritan's Purse.

All three received experimental therapies, because there are no approved vaccines or treatments for Ebola.

Brantly and Writebol got the experimental drug ZMapp, which contains man-made antibodies against Ebola. Supplies of that drug — which was early in the development process when the Ebola epidemic broke out — are exhausted.

Sacra received a drug called TKM-Ebola, which blocks the virus' ability to replicate. In addition, Brantly received a blood donation from an Ebola survivor while he was in Liberia. Brantly then donated blood to Sacra.

Doctors don't know whether any of these experimental treatments were responsible for curing patients or if the Americans survived because of excellent supportive care to prevent dehydration and other dangerous complications.

About 70% of Ebola patients in this outbreak have died, according to the World Health Organization.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., urged people not to react with fear to the news of the Dallas patient.

"Americans need to remain calm and listen to the precautionary measures being suggested by the CDC," said Coons, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs. "Ebola cannot be contracted through the air or the water supply and requires direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone already infected and exhibiting symptoms. It was only a matter of time before an Ebola case would be emerge here in the United States, but as we're seeing in Dallas today, our public health system has the resources, capabilities and knowledge to address and contain this virus quickly and safely."

Coons praised the U.S. effort to help fight Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"The U.S. is doing the right thing by stepping up to the growing challenge of combating the spread of Ebola in West Africa and developing a vaccine and treatment," Coons said. "Without America's aggressive and proactive engagement, there is a real threat that this virus might become a global pandemic."

President Obama has committed more than $750 million in resources and is deploying 3,000 troops. Coons noted that Congress authorized $58 million in funding for the Department of Health and Human Services to expedite development, testing and production of a vaccine and treatment.

Contributing: Janet St. James and Josh Davis, WFAA-TV, Dallas.

Inside America's secretive biolabs

Alison Young and Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY

Vials of bioterror bacteria have gone missing. Lab mice infected with deadly viruses have escaped, and wild rodents have been found making nests with research waste. Cattle infected in a university's vaccine experiments were repeatedly sent to slaughter and their meat sold for human consumption. Gear meant to protect lab workers from lethal viruses such as Ebola and bird flu has failed, repeatedly.

A USA TODAY Network investigation reveals that hundreds of lab mistakes, safety violations and near-miss incidents have occurred in biological laboratories coast to coast in recent years, putting scientists, their colleagues and sometimes even the public at risk.

Oversight of biological research labs is fragmented, often secretive and largely self-policing, the investigation found. And even when research facilities commit the most egregious safety or security breaches — as more than 100 labs have — federal regulators keep their names secret.

Of particular concern are mishaps occurring at institutions working with the world's most dangerous pathogens in biosafety level 3 and 4 labs — the two highest levels of containment that have proliferated since the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001. Yet there is no publicly available list of these labs, and the scope of their research and safety records are largely unknown to most state health departments charged with responding to disease outbreaks. Even the federal government doesn't know where they all are, the Government Accountability Office has warned for years.

A team of reporters who work for the USA TODAY Network of Gannett newspapers and TV stations identified more than 200 of these high-containment lab facilities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia operated by government agencies, universities and private companies. They're scattered across the country from the heart of New York City to a valley in Montana; from an area near Seattle's Space Needle to just a few blocks from Kansas City's Country Club Plaza restaurant and shopping district.

High-profile lab accidents last year with anthrax, Ebola and bird flu at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the discovery of forgotten vials of deadly smallpox virus at the National Institutes of Health raised widespread concerns about lab safety and security nationwide and whether current oversight is adequate to protect workers and the public. Wednesday the Department of Defense disclosed one of its labs in Utah mistakenly sent samples of live anthrax -- instead of killed specimens – to labs across the USA plus a military base in South Korea where 22 people are now being treated with antibiotics because of their potential exposure to the bioterror pathogen. As many as 18 labs in nine states received the samples, the CDC said Thursday.

"What the CDC incidents showed us ... is that the very best labs are not perfectly safe," says Marc Lipsitch, a Harvard University professor of epidemiology. "If it can happen there, it certainly can happen anywhere."

Some people find little reassurance that nobody was sickened in the CDC accidents or in the historically low numbers of serious infections among lab workers generally, or that infections spreading into communities surrounding labs have been rarer still.

"Many of us think that's really a matter of good fortune," said Beth Willis, who chairs a citizen lab advisory panel in Frederick, Md., home to one of the nation's largest high-containment research campuses at the Army's Fort Detrick.

The country's best labs have robust safety programs, said Kenneth Berns, co-chair of a panel of outside lab safety advisers currently examining biosafety at CDC and other federal labs. Yet the systemic safety problems identified at the CDC's prestigious labs have raised questions about what's happening elsewhere. "It's a matter of some concern," said Berns, a distinguished professor emeritus of molecular genetics and microbiology at the University of Florida.

The consequences could be devastating if accidents were to occur with lab-created strains of deadly influenza viruses that are purposely engineered to be easier to spread than what's found in nature, said David Relman, a microbiology professor at Stanford University who is a federal adviser on lab safety and a past president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

"You're talking about something that has the ability to take off, and we could not be confident of being able to contain it," he said.

Relman said that not enough is known about the state of safety at labs that perform infectious disease research but emphasized that the kinds of labs drawing concern are the same ones the public needs to discover important new treatments and vaccines. "We have to find some happy blend of minimized risk and enhanced benefit," he said.

At the high-containment labs identified by USA TODAY, experiments are underway involving drug-resistant tuberculosis, exotic strains of flu, the SARS and MERS viruses, plague, anthrax, botulism, ricin and the Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever viruses, according to interviews and more than 20,000 pages of internal lab safety records and incident reports obtained from labs across the country.

Studies are also being done on a wide range of bioterrorism pathogens that are less known to the public, such as the agents that cause exotic diseases like tularemia, Q fever and melioidosis. Still others are focused on pathogens that pose serious economic risks to agriculture, such as foot-and-mouth disease, brucellosis and "mad cow" disease.

At a few labs, experiments have been done with strains of flu and other viruses purposely made to be more dangerous in studies that seek to understand how they might mutate naturally. White House science advisers called for a temporary halt of that kind of "gain of function" research last fall while expert scientific panels spend the next year studying its risks and benefits.

The research at BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs — which use special equipment, negative air pressure and numerous safety and security procedures — seeks to better understand how organisms cause disease and ways to protect against them. It's the kind of work that the public doesn't give much thought to until people with Ebola arrive on planes in the United States from an outbreak in Africa, or the current avian flu outbreak forces farmers to kill millions of chickens raising the specter of higher egg prices.

It's impossible to obtain a full accounting of lab accidents or lab-acquired infections because there is no universal, mandatory requirement for reporting them and no system to analyze trends to assess emerging biosafety risks and disseminate lessons learned on a regular basis.

The Federal Select Agent Program, which inspects and regulates the subset of research labs that experiment with about four dozen types of pathogens deemed to pose bioterror threats, requires labs to report potential exposure or release incidents, as well as thefts or losses of specimens.

From 2006 through 2013, labs notified federal regulators of about 1,500 incidents with select agent pathogens and, in more than 800 cases, workers received medical treatment or evaluation, limited public data in program annual reports show. Fifteen people contracted laboratory-acquired infections and there were three unintended infections of animals, according to the reports, which do not identify labs and mostly provide aggregated counts of incidents by type. Reported incidents involve events ranging from spills to failures of personal protective equipment or mechanical systems to needle sticks and animal bites.

The program, jointly run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, refuses to release copies of detailed incident reports, citing a 2002 bioterrorism law.

Incident records the USA TODAY Network obtained directly from individual labs provide a window on the kinds of mistakes that happen. An animal caretaker in Georgia was potentially exposed to a bird flu virus that kills 60% of the people it infects when a defective respirator hose supplying purified air detached from its coupling in September. A researcher in Wisconsin was quarantined for seven days in 2013 after a needle stick with a version of the same H5N1 influenza virus. A lab worker in Colorado failed to ensure specimens of the deadly bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei had been killed before shipping them in May 2014 to a co-worker in a lower-level lab who handled them without critical protective gear. None of the workers was infected.

The public and the lab community tend to learn only about the rare instances of serious or fatal lab infections, which sometimes are published as case reports in scientific journals or make national news.

In 2009, Malcolm Casadaban, a University of Chicago scientist with an underlying medical condition, died from an infection with a weakened strain of plague bacteria. In 2012, 25-year-old researcher Richard Din died after being infected during vaccine research involving Neisseria meningitides bacteria at a lab inside San Francisco's VA medical center. Both of their deaths involved research in biosafety level 2 labs, where pathogens are considered to be less dangerous than those worked with in high-containment labs.

Din, who became a researcher to cure diseases like the cancer that killed his mother, developed a fever and started feeling dizzy while out to dinner with friends. He had no idea how serious his symptoms were, his friends and family told USA TODAY. By morning, Din was covered in a splotchy rash and could barely talk, recalled Lawrence Tsai, who raced to Din's apartment to help.

Tsai carried his friend down two flights of stairs and drove him to the hospital. "His body was very hard, very straight," Tsai said. "Only his eyes were open. He could not say anything."

A few hours later, Din was dead. And Tsai said he and his friends were told they, too, were at risk and needed to take antibiotics because of their close contact with him. The bacteria that killed Din can spread from person to person by direct contact with respiratory secretions. About two dozen emergency room workers also were treated with antibiotics as a precaution, according to a presentation about the case at a scientific conference. Nobody else was sickened.

Federal workplace safety investigators, who investigated because the case involved a death, said Din died because the VA failed to adequately supervise and protect workers in the research lab. Among the "serious" issues they cited: Din and other workers in the lab were manipulating specimens of the dangerous bacteria out on tabletops — not inside protective biosafety cabinets that would have reduced potential exposures to droplets or splashes. The lab also failed to train workers about warning signs of infection, violation records show.

Although lab-created outbreaks that spread to people or animals in the surrounding community are rare, they have happened.

"That's what you would worry about," said Gigi Kwik Gronvall, of the UPMC Center for Health Security, an independent think tank that studies biosecurity and epidemics. "But even then the consequences up to now have been limited to the very close contacts of the person who was infected."

A small, deadly outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in China in 2004 was traced to lab workers at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing. In 2007, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease among cattle in England that required herds to be slaughtered was blamed on leaking drainage pipes at a nearby research complex.

In Louisiana, tests are underway to make sure a deadly bioterror bacterium hasn't colonized the soil and water around the Tulane National Primate Research Center near New Orleans. Late last year, the bacteria got out of one of the center's BSL-3 labs, likely hitching a ride on workers' clothing, sickening two monkeys that lived in outdoor cages and later infecting others. Tulane will spend the next five years testing its outdoor monkey colony as well as wildlife and feral cats around the 500-acre facility to ensure the bacteria haven't contaminated the environment. The CDC and Tulane say they think the bacteria spread only inside the center's buildings, and so far tests outdoors have not detected the bacterium, Burkholderia pseudomallei, which can cause severe and difficult-to-treat illness in people and animals infected by coming into contact with contaminated soil or water.

On a global scale, a lab accident is considered by many scientists to be the likely explanation for how an H1N1 flu strain re-emerged in 1977 that was so genetically similar to one that had disappeared before 1957 it looked as if it had been "preserved" over the decades. The re-emergence "was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source," according to a 2009 article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

However, most pathogens studied in labs, unlike the flu, don't spread easily from person to person. Often, to become infected a person needs to have direct contact with a pathogen, which is why lab workers are most at risk, experts said. For example, people can become infected with anthrax by inhaling the bacterium's spores, but once sickened they are not contagious, according to the CDC.

"I don't think the public needs to be too concerned," said Marian Downing, president of the American Biological Safety Association. "There are multiple levels of checks and balances in place."

Beyond accidental lab-associated outbreaks, federal auditors consider the deliberate theft and misuse of a deadly pathogen to be one of the most significant risks of biolab research. That's what the FBI says happened in the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that killed five and sickened 17. Bruce Ivins, a biologist and anthrax researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md., was the perpetrator, the FBI concluded.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, has issued repeated warnings since 2007 that the proliferation of BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories has increased the aggregate risk of accidental or intentional releases of viruses, bacteria or toxins.

No single agency tracks the overall number or location of these labs, the GAO has said. Little is known about high-containment labs working with dangerous pathogens such as tuberculosis, the MERS virus and others that aren't on the select agent list and tracked by the Federal Select Agent Program.

National standards for constructing and operating these kinds of labs are lacking, which means labs vary by local building requirements. While voluntary guidance exists for safe lab design and operations, the GAO has found it is not universally followed.

The documents obtained by USA TODAY show power failures at BSL-3 labs at Texas A&M University repeatedly resulted in the labs losing their negative air pressure during 2013, a key safety feature that is among several used to keep pathogens contained inside the lab. The CDC's labs in Atlanta also have had airflow problems over the years, the newspaper previously reported.

"The public is concerned about these laboratories because exposing workers and the public to dangerous pathogens, whether deliberate or accidental, can have disastrous consequences," the GAO's Nancy Kingsbury told Congress at a hearing on the CDC lab incidents last summer.

Lab regulators at the Federal Select Agent Program — whose departments often fund the research they oversee — would not grant interviews despite repeated requests since last year. The program oversees about 262 organizations that operate BSL-3 and eight organizations that operate BSL-4 labs.

The two federal agencies that jointly run the program — the CDC and USDA — operate their own labs, which have been involved in recent high-profile incidents.

"We believe the current system of inspecting/overseeing laboratories is adequate, but we are always open to continued improvements," the CDC said in an emailed statement. USDA officials also declined to be interviewed.

Lab safety officials at the National Institutes of Health, a major research funding agency that operates its own labs and helps set national biosafety guidelines, also declined interview requests.

"There is no 'zero-risk' proposition in the conduct of research," the agency said in a statement. "NIH works extremely hard to minimize all research-related risks."

More than 100 labs experimenting with potential bioterror agents have been cited by regulators at the CDC and USDA for serious safety and security failings since 2003, USA TODAY has learned.

Yet so much of select agent oversight is cloaked in secrecy, making it difficult to assess regulators' effectiveness in ensuring safety. In several instances, troubled labs and even federal regulators appeared to misrepresent the significance of the government's enforcement efforts.

Since 2003, the CDC has referred 79 labs for potential enforcement actions by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General. It has levied fines against 19 of them totaling more than $2.4 million, the CDC said in response to questions.

Some are repeat offenders. Five labs have had "multiple referrals" for enforcement actions, the CDC said. Two labs have been kicked out of the program, and five labs have been suspended from doing any select agent research, the agency said.

Which labs repeatedly failed to address safety problems? The CDC won't name names — not even for the two labs kicked out of the select agent program. The CDC and its regulatory partners at the USDA say the 2002 bioterrorism law requires keeping this information secret.

Yet earlier this year, the CDC publicly announced its suspension of the Tulane National Primate Research Center — after the center's accidental release of a bioterror bacterium became publicly known and was the subject of news reports. The CDC said it balances the public's right to transparency with the risk posed by information being made available to those who might use it to threaten public health or security.

Currently seven labs are under the extra scrutiny of a federal select agent lab performance improvement program, the CDC said. The program is offered as a voluntary alternative to suspension or other regulatory action, the agency said, for labs with a "repeated failure to correct past observation, biosafety and security concerns" or failures to comply with extra security requirements for work with "Tier 1" select agents. Tier 1 agents are those deemed to pose the greatest risk of deliberate misuse with the most significant potential for mass casualties or devastating economic effects.

While under scrutiny of the program, an individual researcher or project must halt the research that has been found in violation, but other select agent research at the institution generally is allowed to continue, the CDC said.

Thirty-three labs have been put on performance improvement programs since 2008, CDC said. Their names are secret too.

Dozens more labs have faced regulatory actions from the USDA, which takes the lead overseeing select agent labs primarily working with animal or agricultural pathogens. The USDA says it has conducted 48 investigations that have resulted in $116,750 in fines.

The USDA said all of its enforcement records about these fines are required to be kept secret because of the 2002 bioterrorism law. The USDA did release a spreadsheet it says documents its actions, but the agency redacted almost all the information on it: lab names, violation types and even dates. Only a few references to warning letters and fines were spared the agency's black marker.

The Federal Select Agent Program says no law or regulation bars the labs themselves from discussing their select agent research. And universities and other research institutions routinely publish their research on select agent pathogens in scientific journals.

Registered labs just aren't supposed to share details of specific security measures, such as locations of keys and codes, that would give access to pathogens. The CDC and USDA said there is nothing that prohibits labs from releasing information or answering questions about any regulatory problems they've had. Yet few were willing to readilydiscuss violations or failed inspections.

Labs at the University of Hawaii-Manoa are among those in the federal performance improvement program, at least as of January, records obtained by USA TODAY show. Although the secrecy provisions of the 2002 bioterrorism law apply only to certain federal agencies, officials at the state-run university cited that law among its reasons for denying requests for records about safety violations and the performance improvement program.

The university inadvertently confirmed that its Honolulu labs had been put in the performance improvement program in records it filed in January with Hawaii's Office of Information Practices, which is deciding USA TODAY's public records appeal. The university wrote that being put on a PIP is something it is "proud" of.

"We do not believe entering into the program is an embarrassment, we think it should be showcased, but that would be improper because as participants in the Federal Select Agent Program, we are obligated to keep this information private," the university wrote to the appeals agency, adding that it "has been an exemplary participant in the Federal Select Agent Program."

University of Hawaii officials declined to be interviewed.

Last year, two labs agreed to pay fines handed down by the HHS Office of Inspector General for select agent violations, records show.

A lab that federal officials would describe only as an "Arizona research university" agreed in 2014 to pay a $165,000 fine for failing to keep accurate inventory records for select agents and not having biosafety procedures adequate for the risks associated with the pathogens they worked with. The lab, the USA TODAY Network's reporting found, was Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Lab director Paul Keim said the issues date back to 2010 when the university had difficulty keeping up with changing federal regulations. Since then the university's labs have passed several inspections, he said.

An unnamed Florida laboratory agreed to pay $50,000 to resolve violations that included failing to ensure accurate inventories of select agents and failing to notify the CDC and appropriate law enforcement agencies after discovering a missing select agent.

The inspector general's office, citing regulations stemming from the 2002 bioterrorism law, redacted the names of these labs, as well as all other labs receiving fines, in documents it provided to USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act. Other labs that have been fined over the years for select agent violations are located in Alabama, California, Missouri, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, records show.

As a way of providing some oversight, Congress requires a report each year on the number of thefts, losses and releases of bioterror pathogens at labs regulated by the Federal Select Agent Program.

Yet regulators provide scant details of their activities and the problems identified at labs. Usually just three pages long plus a cover page, the reports contain only aggregated counts of lab incidents by type, plus vague information on a few serious incidents.

The select agent program told Congress it had "imposed a $425,000 civil money penalty" on an unnamed lab where a serious biosafety lapse in 2008 had resulted in a cow in a nearby disease-free herd becoming infected with Brucella bacteria, which cause brucellosis.

Brucellosis is a contagious and economically significant agricultural disease — which causes cattle and other livestock to abort their fetuses, produce less milk, suffer weight loss, infertility and lameness. It has been the subject of eradication efforts for decades.

The $425,000 fine would have been one of the largest in the overall select agent program's history — if it had actually been imposed.

But it wasn't imposed, USA TODAY's investigation found, and the USDA never corrected the record with Congress.

USA TODAY was able to identify the Brucella research program at Louisiana State University's AgCenter in Baton Rouge as the likely recipient of the $425,000 fine by examining USDA animal health reports that tallied what states reported brucellosis cases in 2008. Louisiana, which had a case that year, had been declared brucellosis-free in 2000.

LSU officials spent months denying USA TODAY access to its records about the incident, citing among other things select agent regulations unrelated to the requested information. In statements and interviews, LSU downplayed its violations and provided information that was later contradicted by federal records.

"The incident was not found to be caused by a violation of federal regulations; no fines were imposed upon LSU, and the regulatory agencies had uncertainty as to whether the strain of bacteria in the affected cow was the same strain that was being used in the LSU research," LSU officials said in a November 2014 email to USA TODAY.

Yet, in December 2014, when USA TODAY received copies of the incident investigation reports from the USDA and Louisiana's state agriculture department, the documents showed no uncertainty.

USDA records show that investigators documented serious violations. In levying the $425,000 fine, regulators cited LSU for failing to have adequate biosafety measures, resulting in the release of the bacteria that caused the cow's infection. The USDA also cited LSU for violating regulations by sending Brucella-infected cattle that had been part of select agent vaccine experiments to an unregistered slaughter facility where their meat was sold for human consumption.

LSU's Phil Elzer, who at the time ran the Brucella studies and now is a university administrator, said in an interview the practice of sending research cattle to slaughter was declared in the lab's operating procedures that were reviewed and signed off on at each inspection by Federal Select Agent Program regulators. "To all of a sudden say we were doing it wrong was very surprising," Elzer said. LSU appealed, and the USDA eventually dropped the fine, he said.

In January 2010, records show, the USDA sent a letter to LSU saying the case was being closed but reiterating the issues with the infected cow and the use of the unauthorized slaughter plant.

USDA officials acknowledge that they never imposed the $425,000 fine and made a mistake touting it in their report to Congress.

"It should have stated that we were proposing a fine, instead of stating we issued a fine," said Freeda Isaac, USDA's director of Agriculture Select Agent Services, in an emailed statement. Isaac added that the USDA suspended a portion of LSU's select agent registration because of the Brucella incident and "that portion of the registration is still suspended," Isaac said last fall.

For those labs not in the select agent program — and even those that are — self-policing is the front line of biosafety. Biosafety committees at research institutions, often staffed by scientists' colleagues, assess the risks of proposed research and grant or deny approval for studies. Labs also have other safety staff who may do internal inspections and lab audits, plus additional committees overseeing the use of animals in research.

Yet some researchers appear ignorant of their institutions' biosafety rules. Others brazenly ignore repeated requests by biosafety staff to stop experiments and address issues.

Documents obtained by the USA TODAY Network include at least 50 incidents since 2012 in which researchers were conducting experiments with genetically manipulated organisms without proper approval from internal safety committees. In some cases, records show researchers flaunting their institutional rules.

• At the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in, biosafety staff concluded in a 2013 report that the root causes of a researcher failing to get her experiments approved included "general indifference of the investigator to institutional rules governing the need for biosafety compliance" as well as a "lack of oversight of research activities." The scientist, the investigation revealed, knowingly launched unapproved experiments — exposing mice to a genetically manipulated strain of Burkholderia thailandensis — in a quest to get a vaccine study manuscript published that reviewers said needed additional data. The research was halted after veterinarians found several cages containing dead and dying mice, yet none of the cages was labeled with the infectious agent and they were in an area not approved for experiments with a BSL-2 pathogen. The incident was "an extremely unusual event," said Sheila Champlin, an assistant vice chancellor at the center, noting corrective actions were taken before the scientist was allowed to resume research.

• At the University of Iowa, a biosafety officer in February 2014 discovered that a scientist had been conducting experiments with a genetically manipulated strain of the MERS virus since September 2013 without biosafety committee approval. The biosafety officer ordered the investigator to stop all experiments, and the scientist was put on probation and received increased safety monitoring. The work was being done in a BSL-3 lab at the time it was discovered, but started in a BSL-2 lab, the safety officer's investigation found. The university concluded that the scientist did not "effectively communicate" to his staff the importance of getting safety committee approval before starting the experiments with the virus, which can cause a deadly, contagious respiratory disease in people.

• At the University of California-Irvine, a researcher ignored repeated notices from biosafety staff during 2012 and 2013 that a research project's approval had expired, that it needed further revisions and that all work must cease — yet the scientist continued the experiments with a lentivirus, anyway, in the BSL-2 lab. As a result of the incident, the university now sends researchers four notices starting 90 days before approvals expire, said James Hicks, the university's associate vice chancellor of research. As the deadline nears, Hicks is copied on the notices so he can intervene if necessary. "We take a very strong view and a very correct view of the importance of following the regulations and the guidelines," he said in an interview.

• At the University of Nebraska, a biosafety officer in 2013 found that a researcher had continued growing plants as part of an experiment using a transgenic tobacco rattle virus vector — despite being told repeatedly over two months that additional approval was needed from the biosafety committee before research could begin. As a result of the incident, the university said it revised its biosafety guidelines to describe consequences of unapproved research and sent a letter to faculty. "This was an isolated instance that was fully and successfully resolved," the university said.

• At the University of Hawaii-Manoa, biosafety staff discovered a scientist was doing a type of cancer research in 2012 despite being denied biosafety committee approval and being repeatedly told not to do the experiments. Separately, at a March 2013 biosafety committee meeting at the university, members discussed the need for penalties when researchers fail to comply with biosafety rules, stating "there must be some consequence and corrective action other than an email" to the scientist, the minutes say.

Labs that receive funding from the National Institutes of Health and some other federal agencies are required to report incidents to the NIH involving certain types of genetically engineered organisms and recombinant DNA technology. From 2010 through 2014, the NIH received 644 reports of lab incidents during this kind of research.

Most of the reports the NIH receives are for what it says are non-serious incidents, such as small spills, splashes, cuts and equipment failures. Failure to obtain required biosafety committee approvals to do this type of research are among the more common types of non-compliance.

Although it is not a regulatory agency, the NIH said in a statement that agency staff have made site visits to 100 institutions in recent years in an effort to help improve biosafety committee resources and adherence to the NIH Guidelines for operating their labs.

"Most instances of non-compliance result from a lack of full understanding of the requirements of the NIH Guidelines, rather than willful disregard, and our emphasis has been on corrective actions through education, which institutions seem uniformly responsive to," the NIH said.

In September 2014, the NIH contacted the University of Louisville after a whistle-blower alleged the university had knowingly failed to report lab incidents as required, according to records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act. In response, the university told the NIH that it discovered three incidents that were not reported to the NIH but should have been, the records show.

The records indicate that University of Louisville biosafety officials were aware of some of the unreported incidents as much as six months before the NIH opened its inquiry. William Pierce Jr., the university's executive vice president for research and innovation, in a statement to USA TODAY, said "there was apparent confusion regarding the authority and responsibility for reporting violations to the NIH." Pierce said the university has hired an outside firm to oversee its biosafety committee and created training courses for scientists. "We feel confident the current system is working," he said.

The NIH closed its inquiry after the university answered the agency's questions, filed reports on the previously unreported incidents and agreed to take actions to ensure better reporting in the future.

"In investigating the incident, we did not find any evidence of willful non-compliance," the NIH said in response to USA TODAY's questions.

For some residents living near labs, the lack of transparency is frustrating — and worrisome. It's not enough to tell the public the labs have robust safety procedures. "What people are really interested in is how well it's working," said Beth Willis, the citizen lab safety representative near Fort Detrick. "The more people in the community feel that there's secrecy, the more they're distrustful, whether their distrust is warranted or not."

Liberian woman appears to have contracted Ebola through sex with ...

Liz Szabo

USA TODAY

A Liberian woman appears to have contracted Ebola from unprotected sex with a man who survived the virus, health officials said today.

The 44-year-old woman was diagnosed March 20, the first new Ebola case in Liberia in a month. Doctors were perplexed by her case, because she hadn't been to a funeral or had any other contact with current patients, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the woman did have unprotected vaginal intercourse a few weeks earlier, with a 45-year-old Ebola survivor who has been free of the disease for months. The man developed the disease in September and was discharged from a treatment center in early October. That man also had sex with a second woman, who has not tested positive for Ebola, the CDC says.

Although doctors have known for some time that the Ebola virus can survive in semen long after a patient is considered cured, there has never been a clear, documented case of this happening, according to the CDC report.

People who survive Ebola — and whose blood tests show no sign of the virus — are generally considered to be non-infectious. The virus is spread through contact with bodily fluids and typically spreads through blood, a fact that has put health workers at very high risk of Ebola. People cannot spread the virus through casual contact, such as working in the same office or riding the bus. Ebola does not spread through the air.

But studies conducted during previous outbreaks have found that the Ebola virus can be found in semen up to 82 days after a patient's initial symptoms. Scientists don't know if the man's semen contains live Ebola viruses, although they plan to conduct such tests, the CDC report says.

Tests of the man's semen did find genetic material from the Ebola virus, called RNA. The tests were performed 199 days — or about 6½ months — after he first developed symptoms, suggesting that the genetic material can remain in semen much longer than previously known. Earlier studies have found genetic material from Ebola up to 101 days after the beginning of symptoms, the CDC says.

The CDC notes only one previous case of a possible sexual transmission of Ebola, although the new report describes the evidence as "inconclusive." Researchers also documented a possible case in which someone contracted the Marburg virus — which is similar to Ebola — in 1968.

The CDC has long warned Ebola survivors to either abstain from sex for three months or to use condoms during that time. Now, the CDC advises people to avoid contact with semen from male survivors. Men who survive Ebola should use condoms if they have sex and take care when disposing of the condoms.

According to the World Health Organization, 26,298 people have been infected with Ebola in the West African outbreak, and 10,892 have died, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Liberia has had no new Ebola cases in five weeks. That country's last confirmed case died March 27. The WHO declares countries to be Ebola-free 42 days after the last known case. If there are no additional cases, Liberia could be declared Ebola-free May 9.

A total of 33 new cases were diagnosed in Sierra Leone and Guinea in the week ending April 26, the WHO says. No health workers have been diagnosed with Ebola for the past two weeks. More than 865 health workers have been infected with the virus and 504 have died.

Guinea and Sierra Leone are still struggling to control risky practices that can spread Ebola, such as traditional burials in which mourners touch the dead. According to the WHO, 66 unsafe burials were held in Guinea the week that ended April 26.

During the same week, eight Ebola victims in Guinea were diagnosed only after death. That's a dangerous trend, because people who remain at home during their illness can spread the virus to many other people. Doctors have tried to isolate Ebola patients in treatment centers, both to keep them from transmitting the virus, as well as to provide the best chance of survival.

In related news, a patient admitted to a hospital in Charlotte, N.C., has tested negative for Ebola. The patient had been isolated at Carolinas Medical Center because of Ebola-like symptoms and recent travel to West Africa.

Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 18 July 2022 | The Week UK

IMF calls for tax hikes

Cutting UK taxes now would be a mistake, a top official at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned. As several Tory leadership hopefuls promise tax cuts, Mark Flanagan, who leads the IMF’s UK team, told BBC News that “debt-financed tax cuts at this point would be a mistake”. He argued that it would be better to raise taxes: “At some point you have to decide, do we want to invest in the climate transition? Do we want invest in digitalisation? Do we want to invest in skills for the public? Well, if you do, you need the resources to do it.”

Fact check: 2009 swine flu spread rapidly, but COVID-19 is more ...

The claim: The 2009 swine flu pandemic had 56 million more cases in the U.S. than coronavirus and we did nothing.

Over the past several months, social media users have made comparisons between the spreading coronavirus and past disease outbreaks.

Some widely shared Facebook posts have compared the coronavirus to the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic, pointing out that the swine flu had 56 million more cases in its first year than the coronavirus has had so far.

The posts, which lack any context about the number of deaths from either virus, question the U.S. response to the coronavirus, given the response to the swine flu based on the apparent disparity in the number of cases.

"How many months were schools closed back then? How long did we wear masks?" an Aug. 2 post from the page Awkward Gym Moments says.

"Only 56 million to go until we equal swine flu in 2009 when we did nothing then," says a July 26 post from the Facebook user David Pike Sr., which had 22,000 shares as of Thursday.

Neither user responded to a USA TODAY request for comment.

More:The benefits of clear face masks—and where to buy them

A look back at swine flu

In spring 2009, a new strain of the H1N1 virus that became known as "swine flu" began circulating in the United States. On June 11, the World Health Organization declared the virus a pandemic.

From April 12, 2009, to April 10, 2010, the virus infected more than 60 million people in the U.S., according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC estimates show those infections resulted in about 274,000 hospitalizations and 12,500 deaths, or a fatality rate of 0.02% among cases. The CDC estimates that 151,700 to 575,400 people died from that flu worldwide. The swine flu affected predominately children and young- to middle-aged adults: According to the CDC, 80% of deaths worldwide were in people under 65.

More:A new swine flu strain found in Chinese pigs has 'pandemic potential,' experts say

While the U.S. government in spring 2009 initially recommended schools shut down temporarily if there were suspected cases, it soon changed its recommendation based on the lower severity of the virus. However, hundreds of schools did shut down for a few days in the spring and fall because of the rapid spread of the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a video interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this year that the swine flu was easily transmitted but was not as deadly as some other pandemics.

"That spread very, very well, but the fatality rate was quite low, and that’s the reason why it wasn’t dubbed as a particularly serious pandemic, even though it spread very rapidly," Fauci said.

More:Fact check: What's true and what's false about coronavirus?

How do H1N1, COVID-19 compare?

The death toll for the novel coronavirus is already exponentially higher than that of H1N1, despite having just a fraction of the number of infections in a fraction of the time.

Since the first reported U.S. coronavirus death on Feb. 29, there have been more than 166,000 U.S. deaths – more than 13 times the estimated number of U.S. swine flu deaths in its first year – according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, more than 750,000 people have died of COVID-19, significantly more than the highest swine flu death estimate from the CDC.

The CDC estimates the coronavirus has an infection fatality rate of 0.65%. Unlike the swine flu, those primarily at risk for coronavirus are older adults and those with underlying medical conditions.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told USA TODAY that because the severity of the coronavirus is quite different from that of the swine flu, the U.S. response needed to be significantly different, too.

Benjamin said the U.S. was able to develop a vaccine relatively quickly to combat the swine flu. The first doses of the swine flu vaccine were given on Oct. 5, just five months and 20 days after the first confirmed U.S. case, and were available in larger quantities in November. But there is no coronavirus vaccine.

Benjamin said therapeutics like Theraflu also aided the U.S. response to the swine flu, while therapeutics for COVID-19 have taken longer to develop.

"We're just now beginning to get some stuff that gives us a little chance to have something that kind of works (and) shortens the hospital stay," he said.

Our ruling: Missing context

It's true that the CDC estimates the 2009 swine flu pandemic infected an estimated 60.8 million people in its first year, versus about 5 million COVID-19 cases confirmed in the U.S. But that comparison lacks important context about the severity of each virus. While the swine flu spread easily, the virus had only a fraction of the fatality rate of COVID-19. A comparison between the two that lacks this context when comparing the nation's response is incomplete. For that reason, we rate this post as MISSING CONTEXT.

Our fact-check sources:

Ian Richardson covers the Iowa Statehouse for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at irichardson@registermedia.com.

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines don't cause death, won't depopulate ...

The claim: Coronavirus vaccines are killing people and will decimate the world’s population

Several widely shared videos and blog posts on Facebook say the COVID-19 vaccines are a matter of life and death – but not because of the risk of the disease.

In an article published April 22 and later taken down, a website called Red Pill University (a reference to the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory) wrote that COVID-19 vaccines “will decimate world’s population.” As evidence, it cites a video featuring Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi.

Bhakdi is a microbiologist who has promoted ideas that run counter to the scientific consensus about the coronavirus pandemic, including the claim that face masks don’t protect against infection. In the video, which originally was published by the New American, a conservative magazine, Bhakdi says COVID-19 vaccines are deadly.

“They are forcing vaccination on people, and I believe they are killing people with this vaccination,” he says during the video, which has more than 268,000 views on Rumble, a video-sharing platform.

“Guys, don’t get a third or fourth or fifth (shot), because if you do that, you are going to contribute to the decimation of the world’s population,” he says later.

Over the course of the 40-minute clip, Bhakdi calls the pandemic “a fake,” says wearing masks and quarantining is “absolutely ridiculous nonsense,” and coronavirus tests don’t work. In this fact-check, we’re focusing on the claim that COVID-19 vaccines are killing people.

That claim sounds scary coming from a scientist, but it's not accurate.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved three coronavirus vaccines for emergency use in the United States. Clinical trials involving tens of thousands of participants found the vaccines were safe and effective at preventing coronavirus infection, and millions of Americans have safely received them.

There’s no evidence the vaccines cause death, or that they will depopulate the planet – and clear evidence to the contrary.

Fact check:Biden didn't say July 4 celebrations may be canceled if people don't get COVID vaccinations

USA TODAY reached out to Red Pill University and the New American for comment.

Coronavirus vaccines are safe, effective

The three COVID-19 vaccines approved for emergency use in the U.S. are one from Pfizer-BioNTech, one from Moderna and one from Janssen, a pharmaceutical company owned by Johnson & Johnson. Public health officials say all are safe and effective at preventing COVID-19.

Over the course of several months in 2020, more than 100,000 people participated in clinical trials for the coronavirus vaccines as a group. None of those trials found that the vaccines caused death. The FDA approved the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in December and the Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine in February.

Fact check:No, interacting with a vaccinated person won't cause miscarriage or menstrual changes

Since then, more than 144 million Americans have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If the vaccines were as deadly as Bhakdi says, we would surely see widespread and mounting deaths in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federally managed database of self-reported vaccine side effects. There are reports of vaccine-related deaths in the VAERS database, but because anyone – from doctors and nurses to patients and parents – can submit cases, the CDC says those reports are unverified and may be inaccurate.

Fact check:CDC data on adverse effects of vaccine cannot determine cause

“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective,” the CDC says on its website. “To date, VAERS has not detected patterns in cause of death that would indicate a safety problem with COVID-19 vaccines.”

No evidence of autoimmune responses

Bhakdi says in the video that the vaccines can kill people by causing autoimmune responses. He says that’s because messenger RNA (mRNA) “packages” – genetic strands in the Pfizer and Moderna shots that tell your body how to defend itself against the coronavirus – don’t leave the bloodstream and could cause your immune system to attack healthy cells.

That’s wrong on both fronts.

Fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked the notion that COVID-19 vaccines cause autoimmune disorders. There is no evidence to suggest they do, and Bhakdi’s rationale for the claim – that mRNA never leaves the bloodstream – isn’t accurate. Here’s how it works:

When someone receives a vaccine from Pfizer or Moderna, mRNA strands program cells to produce spike proteins similar to those on the surface of the coronavirus. The body recognizes those proteins as invaders and produces antibodies to block them. Those antibodies prevent future coronavirus infections.

Once that process is completed, mRNA doesn’t linger in the bloodstream.

Fact check:FDA did not associate Pfizer's first vaccine dose with COVID-19 infections

“The cell breaks down and gets rid of the mRNA soon after it is finished using the instructions,” the CDC says on its website.

Blood clot cases extremely rare

According to Bhakdi, another way COVID-19 vaccines are killing people is through the formation of deadly blood clots. That’s an inaccurate spin on recent news about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

In mid-April, the CDC and the FDA recommended a pause in Johnson & Johnson shots after six cases of a rare type of blood clot were reported in women ages 18 to 48 among the nearly 7 million people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the time. One woman in Virginia died.

Fact check:CDC recommends masks in most cases even after COVID-19 vaccine

After a review of the vaccine’s safety, public health officials recommended April 23 that Johnson & Johnson shots resume nationwide.

“A review of all available data at this time shows that the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine’s known and potential benefits outweigh its known and potential risks,” the CDC says on its website. “However, women younger than 50 years old especially should be aware of the rare but increased risk of this adverse event and that there are other COVID-19 vaccine options available for which this risk has not been seen.”

Our rating: False

The claim that coronavirus vaccines are killing people and will decimate the world’s population is FALSE, based on our research. Public health officials say all three coronavirus vaccines approved for emergency use in the U.S. are safe and effective at preventing infection. There is no evidence the vaccines cause deadly autoimmune disorders, and reports of blood clots following the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are extremely rare.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

Fact check: Quarantine sites are real; COVID-19 claim stretches truth

The claim: U.S. military has approved COVID-19 quarantine 'camps' that will access personal information and be monitored by militarized CDC police

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the Department of Defense's approval of military facilities for quarantine use was theorized to be much more than a public health effort.

"A coming digital 5G biometric tracking surveillance CHECKPOINT service that accesses your entire data from financial status, tax history, social credit score, social media ranking, watch history, sexual preference, political views, will be monitored by armed militarized CDC police will determine who is desirable for society and who goes to camp," an Instagram post by user liftingtheveilofficial claims.

The post, from early in the pandemic but which remained viral well into late spring, also incorporates copied text from a February Daily Mail UK article that claims the Pentagon has approved "11 quarantine camps on military bases near major airports across the US in anticipation of an influx of American citizens returning from China in need of monitoring for the deadly coronavirus that is now being called COVID-19."

Liftingtheveiloffical told USA TODAY that his claim was "mostly my own personal sarcastic speculation, and (I'm) being a bit hyperbolic as well." But, he later asserted his speculations were indeed substantiated and made allusions to Bill Gates, various world organizations and secret societies.

Fact check:Federal agents in Portland are not mercenaries provided by Erik Prince

The early origins of quarantining the sick

The concept of quarantine is mentioned in the biblical book of Leviticus – estimated to have been written between the fifth and eighth centuries B.C. – where those afflicted with leprosy are asked to live separately from the healthy. In Chapter 5 of the Book of Numbers, individuals with, suspected of having or exposed to leprosy are advised to be "put out of camp" in order to keep the general living area clean and disease-free.

Outside of religious texts, the Byzantine emperor Justinian, in 549 A.D, enacted laws to prevent entrance to travelers from plague-afflicted regions. During the ecumenical Council of Lyons in 583 A.D., bishops were urged to assist lepers (those suffering from leprosy) within their own cities but cautioned against allowing such individuals to wander about freely.

The large-scale practice of quarantine as a public health strategy emerged in the Middle Ages. This time — between the fifth and 15th centuries A.D. — was notorious for plagues caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, occurring regularly almost every 40-50 years. Towns and villages throughout Europe would isolate sick individuals and forbid outsiders from infected regions or countries from stepping foot in their communities. Some historical documentation from the seventh century suggests armed guards were used to forcibly stop travelers when the plague hit southeastern France.

Fact check:Coronavirus deaths surpass combined battle fatalities in several US wars

More formative policy would take shape after 1348. It was around this time that the deadliest pandemic in recorded in human history, the Black Death, overtook Europe, the Middle East and the rest of the world. Also caused by Yersinia pestis and believed to have originated in the Qinghai Plateau of central Asia (now modern-day Tibet), this plague would strike every 10-20 years over the next four centuries. It is estimated 50%-60% of Europe's population died as a result.

The Black Death compelled European cities, especially those with oft-visited seaports like Venice, Italy, or Dubrovnik, Croatia, to institute a quarantine system involving a council of three who oversaw the responsibility and power of detaining individuals and entire ships. The duration of isolation typically observed by ships coming from infected, or suspected infected, seaports was 30 days; this became 40 days for land travelers, and is the source of the word "quarantine," from the Italian "quaranta giorni" meaning 40 days (this prescribed duration itself appears to be derived from the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates).

Entering legislation

While the Black Death subsided in the early 17th century, the emergence of other transmissible diseases like smallpox, cholera and yellow fever would lay the framework for uniform quarantine policies.

In 1710, England passed the Quarantine Act, mandating a death sentence for anyone who refused to comply with the required 40-day quarantine. Similarly, in the United States, Massachusetts enacted a statute in 1797 that invested the state with the power to mandate quarantine.

Fact check:Document claiming to show CDC guidance about various types of masks is a fake

Quarantine edicts in early America largely varied and were up to local authorities. It was not until a yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans in 1877 that the National Quarantine Act was passed in April 1878. This egislation formalized measures against the introduction and spread of contagious, infectious diseases, and created the National Board of Health, a short-lived institution charged with standardizing quarantine across the nation.

Nearly 70 years later, in 1944, the Public Health Service Act was passed granting the U.S. Public Health Service (now the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service) authorization to "prevent the introduction of epidemic diseases into this country from abroad and to prevent interstate spread of communicable disease." The quarantine program inherent in this responsibility was later transferred to the agency now known as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1967.

Quarantine stations

Just as quarantine took shape centuries ago, so did the concept of a specific building for the quarantined. The first predecessor of a quarantine station was constructed outside Venice on the island of Santa Maria di Nazareth in 1423. Called a lazaretto after the biblical figure Lazarus, these plague hospitals popped up all over Europe and served as "centers of habitation to restrict the spread of disease but close enough to transport the sick," writes Dr. Eugenia Tognotti, a professor of history of medicine and human sciences at the University of Sassari in Italy.

In the United States, the New York City Council constructed a maritime quarantine station on Bedloe's Island, one of a group of islands at the mouth of the Hudson River, in 1738. In 1793, during Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic, a 10-acre quarantine station was built south of the city along the Delaware River.

After Congress approved "an act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen" in 1798, the Marine Hospital Service built and supervised a series of hospitals in the nation's seaports, which included quarantining sailors suspected of carrying disease. These hospitals would later play a huge role in screening and quarantining new immigrants arriving to the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Around the same time, tuberculosis became a major concern, and institutions known as sanatoria or preventoria were established to quarantine and treat affected individuals.

Fact check:Black nurses helped save Philadelphia during a 1793 epidemic

By the first half of the 20th century, quarantine stations were widespread. The U.S. Public Health Service created and maintained more than 110 quarantine stations at air, sea and land ports. But as the perceived threat of infectious disease diminished (thanks to advances in modern medicine such as vaccination), the number of quarantine stations fell: There were 55 when the CDC was given responsibility for quarantines in 1967, shrinking to just seven by 1995.

Outbreaks of new infectious diseases, such as SARS and Ebola, and threats of bioterrorism renewed interest in quarantine stations. An eighth station opened in Atlanta ahead of the 1996 Olympic Games, and increased to 20 more by mid-2007. Currently, there are quarantine stations at 20 ports of entry and land-border crossings where international travelers arrive, according to the CDC.

In response to the coronavirus outbreak, more quarantine sites were made available.

In February, the Department of Defense approved a request from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, for possible use of military facilities to quarantine Americans returning from overseas, particularly evacuees from Wuhan, China, and passengers of the Grand Princess cruise ship.

While 11 bases were approved at the time of the Daily Mail article cited in the Instagram post, this was later expanded to 15. But it's important to note that these quarantine sites were temporary – some were not even used – and not official CDC quarantine stations. Hundreds of Americans were released in February after observing the 14-day quarantine.

Quarantine and individual rights

At present, most isolation and quarantine measures are still split among federal and state authorities and roughly 2,800 local public health departments, according to STAT News. The CDC does retain the authority to "detain, medically examine, and release persons arriving into the United States and traveling between states who are suspected of carrying these communicable diseases" but forced isolation or quarantine is typically undertaken by individual states, not by federal agencies. Isolation or quarantine in a CDC station is generally applied to travelers arriving from abroad.

While U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies may help in enforcing federal quarantine orders, the CDC is itself not militarized. Medical and public health officers at quarantine stations are typically involved in responding to reports of illness, distributing medication, emergency preparedness, alerting local health authorities, inspecting cargo or personal items and other related tasks, according to the CDC. There is no evidence to suggest information pertaining to financial status, tax history, social credit score, social media ranking, watch history, sexual preference or political views is or will be accessed at quarantine stations.

Fact check:5G technology is not linked to coronavirus

Our ruling: Partly false

We rate the claim that the U.S. military has approved COVID-19 quarantine "camps" that will access personal information and be monitored by militarized CDC police as PARTLY FALSE because some of it is not supported by our research. While it is true that 11 military facilities were approved as quarantine bases, these sites were meant to be temporary and are not true quarantine stations. The federal government has some authority to institute a large-scale quarantine, but quarantine measures are still the discretion of state and local health departments. Law enforcement agencies may help enforce federal quarantine orders, but the CDC itself is not militarized. There is no evidence to suggest personal information is or will be accessed at quarantine stations.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.