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Employed at a National Institutes of Health lab in Montana, the two allegedly brought deactivated virus from the Republic of the Congo without a permit.
A 2022 outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, reached the United States, infecting more than 30,000 and killing 42, according to the CDC. | AP
Federal law enforcement agencies on Tuesday charged two researchers at a National Institutes of Health lab in Montana with conspiracy to smuggle deactivated mpox virus into the United States and with giving false statements about it.
The researchers are Vincent Munster, an award-winning scientist who heads the virus ecology section at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, a small town an hour’s drive south of Missoula, and Claude Kwe, a research fellow in Munster’s section, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. Munster is Dutch. Kwe is Cameroonian.
