Disaster nearly struck eastern Mississippi on Tuesday, Oct. 28, when a truck hauling lab monkeys from Tulane University crashed, with several of the animals fleeing the vehicle.
While all but one of the escaped monkeys were “destroyed” — according to the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department — the monkeys were “aggressive to humans” and potentially carried “hepatitis C, herpes, and COVID-19.”
However, Tulane University has now set people’s minds at ease and claimed that the escaped primates would not be the cause of the next pandemic.
“Non-human primates at the Tulane National Biomedical Research Center are provided to other research organizations to advance scientific discovery,” Tulane University said in a statement. “The primates in question belong to another entity and are not infectious. We are actively collaborating
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