News

We would like to draw your attention to the recently published "WHO Guidance on Implementing Regulatory Requirements for Biosafety & Biosecurity in Biomedical Laboratories: A Step-Wise Approach".  The document provides practical information and guidelines designed to support policy-makers and national regulatory bodies to develop and strengthen national biosafety and biosecurity regulatory frameworks. The document may be accessed at the following link.

Brandel et al. describe the outbreak of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease following an exposure 7.5 years prior. Please see the following link for more details.

Emerging Infectious Diseases published an article on a laboratory-associated Dengue virus infection where the authors speculate it may have been caused by an improper doffing of gloves. The article may be downloaded here.

As an aid for training re. doffing of gloves, we recommend the following link.

After careful consideration regarding the ongoing spread of COVID-19 Council decided not to go ahead with the SBNet 2020 Annual Meeting in Zürich (August 20^th - 21^st, 2020).

We have been monitoring the coronavirus situation with the health, safety, and well-being of our guests in mind.

Nevertheless, we are very happy to announce that we will organise a free Webinar on the afternoon of August 20^th and that we attempt to postpone the meeting in Zürich to 2021 (August 26^th - 27^th).

We ask for your patience as we work diligently to prepare the webinar and provide additional information to you.

Also, we kindly ask registrants who have already paid their fees to contact the SBNet office regarding a refund.

Stay healthy and take care!

WHO has published interim biosafety guidelines for work with SARS-CoV-2. The document can be accessed here.

Public Health England issued a guide on the safe handling and processing of SARS-CoV-2 laboratory samples. Details may be found here.

Please refer to the following article looking at disinfectants that inactivate SARS-CoV-2.

An interesting article on how hand sanitisers work, including some training material, can be found at this link.

In times of near mass hysteria and bulk buying of hand sanitisers and face masks as well as stocking large amounts of food, it is important to remember what we have in the arsenal to use in the fight against infectious diseases and how it works. The article also contains a great link to an article on Ignaz Semmelweiss who was the first to observe that doctors washing their hands before baby deliveries drastically reduced the number of women who died after childbirth. A timely reminder of the importance for hand-washing.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) of the USA updated their publication on Practices in Occupational Risk Assessment. Interested parties should follow this link. 

Nature just published an article in their career feature series on biosafety professionals. You may find the article here.