Every Picture Tells a Story: Wuhan’s Institute for Virology is Not Alone

Globally, we will soon have 59 Biosafety Level 4 labs 

• spread across 23 countries
• the majority (77%) in urban areas
• 13% of the countries have oversight over “dual-use” – when research target for “civilian purposes” can be applied to military ones
• 25 in Europe, 14 in North America, 13 in Asia, 4 in Australia, 3 in Africa
• 60% are government-run for public health purposes; the overwhelming number, 48, study human health.

“…there are no binding international standards for safe, secure, and responsible work on pathogens in maximum containment labs.”

Biosecurity and Biosafety

A biosecurity score was given based on whether a country had a record of the inventory of their BSL-4 labs, legislation, and a government agency responsible for their design, cybersecurity, fail-safe and containment systems, training, and vetting of personnel, and transportation procedures.

A biosafety score was likewise given based on legislation and a government agency responsible for standardizing training of personnel, screening of what genetic materials might be sold to the general scientific population, oversight over dual-use of genetic material for civilian and military purposes.

Here is how we match up with China in those two areas

Source: Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in conjunction with the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Economist Tracking BSL-4 labs around the world.