Most shipments of H2N2 flu virus destroyed

GENEVA – Shipments of a killer influenza virus destined for testing in Mexico and Lebanon remain unaccounted for, but the U.N. health organization said 15 other countries that received the samples were expected to have destroyed them by today.

The virus was sent in testing kits to 18 countries starting last year at the request of the College of American Pathologists, which helps laboratories conduct proficiency testing in virus detection.

Ten countries – Hong Kong, Belgium, Singapore, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan – already have destroyed the H2N2 virus, a strain of “Asian Flu” that killed between 1 million and 4 million people worldwide in 1957, according to Klaus Stohr, influenza expert at the World Heath Organization. Anyone born after that date has little or no immunity to it.

Five countries – Saudi Arabia, Bermuda, Brazil, Israel and Japan – were in the process of destroying their samples, Stohr said. Laboratories in the United States, which received 3,747 testing kits that were sent out in October and February, were taking longer because of the volume that had to be dealt with.

In all, Newton, Ohio-based Meridian Bioscience Inc. sent the testing kits to 4,700 laboratories, with the last shipments dispatched in February. Labs in Lebanon and Mexico “never received the specimen, even though they were on the distribution list,” Stohr said, adding that it was not clear when samples destined for the two countries were to have been dispatched.

Lebanon’s Health Minister Mohammed Khalifa said it “is not possible” that the virus samples were in Lebanese laboratories.

The Mexican Health Department said the missing sample never arrived in Mexico. “This was verified by laboratories as well as by the corresponding customs services,” the department said.

Stohr said that the College of American Pathologists suggested it was possible the missing samples never were sent.

The H2N2 virus was distributed as a freeze-dried powder and would be sensitive to high temperature and ultraviolet light. Even at normal temperatures it would deteriorate and become harmless rapidly, Stohr said.

The concern, he said, would arise if a person were to be exposed to a discarded sample before it became harmless.