Riems is a small piece of land south of the very touristy island of Rügen, in Germany. Scientists study pathogens such as rabies, African swine fever, the Crimea-Congo virus or Ebola, testing their effects on large animals like pigs and cows, with the hope of developing a vaccine.
“We are really an Alcatraz of viruses, finally a sort of prison for viruses”
says the vice-president of the Friedrich-Loeffler Institute for Epidemiology (FLI), Franz Conraths, an institute for research on potentially deadly animal viruses.
Dr. Helge Kampen shows a mosquito under a microscope at the Friedrich-Loeffler Institute. | AFP / John MACDOUGALL
Very regulated access
Access to the island is regulated, prior authorization is essential and numerous security checks. The laboratories containing dangerous viruses and the stables are placed at security level 4, the highest. The scientists who work there go through disinfecting showers at the entrance and exit, and have to put on a special protective suit.
“We are doing everything we can to ensure that [les virus] don’t go outside “
from the island, “It is very important for our work”
, specifies the researcher.
The main building of the Friedrich-Loeffler Institute. | AFP / John MACDOUGALL
The oldest institute in the world
No installation of this style exists elsewhere in Europe. You have to go to Winnipeg in Canada or Geelong in Australia to find similar equipment. It is also the oldest research center in virology in the world, created in 1910 by a pioneer in this field, the‘German Friedrich Loeffler.
Formerly concentrated in a building, the institute now occupies almost the entire small island of almost 1.3 km long, connected to the mainland in the early 1970s by a dike.
Under the Nazi regime (1933-1945), research on biological weapons was carried out, before the center concentrated on the development of vaccines from the time of Communist East Germany (1949-1990) . At the time, about 800 people worked there.
A researcher in a laboratory at the Friedrich-Loeffler Institute. | AFP / John MACDOUGALL
Avoid epizootics
The state has invested some 300 million euros from 2008 to modernize the infrastructure, which now has 89 laboratories with different levels of security and 163 stables.
“The bulk of the work that we do is work in the area of preparing for the outbreak of an epizootic”
, explains Franz Conraths, citing the example of African swine fever. “We have to wait every day”
to trigger in Germany, “But we have to do everything to prevent it from happening”
, he explains.
10,000 animals on the island
There are over 10,000 animals on the island, from mosquitoes to mice to fish. And in quarantine stables, there are especially 80 to 100 large animals: cows, sheep, goats, alpacas or wild boars.
“We do everything we can to conduct our analyzes without having to do animal tests”
says Martin Beer, who runs the island’s diagnostic institute. But “The pathogenesis, namely why the animal is sick, how the disease develops, how it reacts, I can only measure it by instilling the infection in an animal”
he says.
The Friedrich-Loeffler Institute is home to 10,000 animals | AFP / John MACDOUGALL
Animals that are too sick are euthanized, no way to let them suffer until the end. If such trials produce a vaccine that will save millions of animals, then “The tests are justified”
, he believes.
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