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Reuters
Reuters
Health
By Jennifer Rigby

Inside the super-secure Swiss lab trying to stop the next pandemic

A staff member of Spiez Laboratory in a BSL-3 lab removes a cell culture bottle infected with viruses from the safety cabinet and places it in a transport box in a bio-containment facility that is available to the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a repository for SARS-CoV-2 viruses or other pathogens with epidemic or pandemic potential, in this handout picture taken June 1, 2022, in Spiez, Switzerland. Andrea Campiche/Spiez Laboratory/Handout via REUTERS

The setting is straight from a spy thriller: Crystal waters below, snow-capped Swiss Alps above and in between, a super-secure facility researching the world's deadliest pathogens.

Spiez Laboratory, known for its detective work on chemical, biological and nuclear threats since World War Two, was tasked last year by the World Health Organization to be the first in a global network of high-security laboratories that will grow, store and share newly discovered microbes that could unleash the next pandemic.

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