Britain needs a new £1billion super-lab to replace the 'crumbling' Porton Down , experts say
Britain needs a new deadly pathogen super-lab to replace the crumbling Porton Down facility, experts have told MPs. This secure Government research site in Salisbury is used to work with smallpox and other viruses and bacteria with potential. But its high security and containment facilities are also used by academics researching pathogens that could spark the next pandemic. However, this work was being held back due to the site's 'crumbling' state, experts have warned. Professor Sir Peter Horby, director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute at Oxford University told MPs from the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee that the value of labs like Porton Down couldn't be underestimated in terms of a pandemic response. 'High containment laboratories are absolutely essential,' he said. 'You can't diagnose the disease, you can't evaluate the diagnostic tests, you can't understand the disease's pathogenesis, you can't evaluate the therapeutics and vaccines and animal models unless you have high containment facilities. 'At some stage you have to work with the live virus, you have to.' But he said the UK is currently lacked capacity to carry out this work. 'The infrastructure at Porton Down is crumbling,' he said. When asked by MPs what the cost would be of replacing Porton Down, Professor Bryan Charleston, director of the Pirbright Institute, a high containment lab working on animal disease, said it would cost over 1billion. 'You'd be talking a 1billion-plus to build a lab of sort of quality and the size that would be expected,' he said. However, he said such a mega-lab would have the advantage of ensuring research on dangerous pathogens was done correctly. 'You don't want two or three of these, you want one of the right size and you want it properly built and properly staffed,' he said. 'They are not easy to run.' Porton Down is what is technically known as a Biosafety Level (BSL) 4 facility, the most secure laboratory of its kind for dangerous pathogen research. BSL-4 labs often have armed guards to keep them secure, with researchers told to wear fully enclosed PPE suits during experiments. Such sites, of which there are currently about 70 around the world, can contain the viruses and bacteria responsible for diseases like smallpox, Ebola, and Lassa Fever. Another famous BSL-4 lab is the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, the facility where some suspect Covid leaked out of, sparking a global pandemic. The pandemic has sparked a rush on expanding BSL 3 and 4 labs, there could be a lack of oversight given the high containment standards these facilities should follow.