Handle with care: mistakes and near-misses at UK Covid labs

A coronavirus-infected ferret bite is among many mishaps investigated during the pandemic

A week before the UK's first coronavirus lockdown, a lab worker at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board in Newport was screening nose and throat swabs from an intensive care patient. The paperwork carried no clinical details and the swabs were not double-bagged to indicate high risk. As such, the work was done on an open bench. But the swabs were more dangerous than thought. It later emerged that they came from a patient who was fighting for their life with Covid.

The incident in March 2020 was among the first of dozens of mishaps, blunders and failures involving Covid that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated over the course of the pandemic. With so many labs, hospitals, universities and test centres handling the virus, such incidents came as no surprise.