Labs to cover human disease threats

Experts in human disease and epidemics are to be moved into the nation's highest-security containment laboratories - now used for livestock diseases - to prepare for bioterrorism, global epidemics and incursions of new diseases.

The Government has approved the creation of a new National Centre for Emerging Diseases and Biosecurity near Wellington to provide a centralised co-ordination and emergency response for human and animal disease outbreaks, biosecurity incidents and potential chemical and biological threats.

It will expand the work of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's existing high-tech laboratories - which are used for the investigation of potential disease outbreaks in livestock - on the Wallaceville, Upper Hutt, site, which meets the (physical containment) PC3 standard: higher than any other laboratory or research centre in New Zealand.

Only PC4 - which would be needed to contain, for instance, the deadly ebola virus - is a more stringent security containment level.

- NZPA