Local authorities in Reedley, California uncovered a warehouse lab that “they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials.” NBC News covers the story here. The CDC tested substances on hand and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes. The NBC News story buries this nugget and leaves it hanging:
Officials were unable to get any California-based address for either company [that owned the materials] except for the previous Fresno location from which UMI had been evicted.
“The other addresses provided for identified authorized agents were either empty offices or addresses in China that could not be verified,” court documents said.
A site called California Globe has more here, here, and here.
Authorities found nearly 1,000 lab mice in the lab, some 200 of which were already dead. CBS 47 Eyewitness News in Fresno reports that they were “bioengineered to incubate the Covid-19 virus.” I have embedded video of the Eyewitness News story below. The text of the report by Juanita Adame is posted online here.
Adame provides this somewhat mangled statement by Fresno County health official Joe Prado about the mice: “Through their statements [i.e., those of the unforthcoming company president] that they were doing some testing on laboratory mice that would help them support, developing the COVID test kits that they had on-site.”
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.