NOVOSIBIRSK October 14 (RIA Novosti) - One of the world's two remaining stocks of smallpox strains, stored in the Russian State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR, will not be destroyed before the final decision on their fate is made by the World Health Organization, VECTOR's director said Tuesday.
"The collection remains as it was. No one is planning to destroy it," Valery Mikheyev told reporters, adding that the WHO had not reached a final decision on whether the virus must be destroyed.
"The issue is being discussed, but I think that it will take long enough until the liquidation of the repositories. The threats persist and in order to have some working material to counter these threats, these sample strains should be [kept]," the scientist said.
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was registered in October 1977. After global vaccination campaigns, the WHO declared smallpox eradicated in 1980.
The world's two remaining collections of smallpox are being stored at VECTOR in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk, and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's high-containment facility in Atlanta, United States.
