Exciting news if you live in the Northshore area of New Orleans - the world famous coronavirus is coming your way!
The Tulane primate center will be testing the coronavirus on animals in their laboratory.
The center's director, Jay Rappaport, said the north shore research facility that's home to several thousand monkeys is well-positioned to find a vaccine for the fast-spreading virus that originated in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in China's Hubei province.
“This is exactly why we have this facility,” said Rappaport of the 40,000-square-foot laboratory. “We were set up to handle infectious agents.”
Rappaport’s team expects to receive vials of the coronavirus in the next week. It will then use them to infect monkeys and study how the virus spreads and how it might be treated.
Funny thing about this... Way back in 1998 two dozen moneys escaped from this very same research enter.
It's true. This specific primate research center has a history of incidents with escaped monkeys.
Two dozen rhesus monkeys broke out of the Tulane University Regional Primate Center last week and scurried for nearby woods, with workers following to recover them.
But don't worry, I'm sure everything will be fine.
By the way, a group of primates escaped from a lab in Sydney, Australia earlier this week:
A baboon scheduled to have a vasectomy has made a daring escape with his two lady friends near a hospital in Sydney.
Footage captured by stunned pedestrians shows the trio of primates running loose in a car park at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital today just before 5:30pm local time.