The Department of Defense said that over the course of a one-year period, 51 labs in 17 states along with three different countries received samples of live anthrax. The department also said that this number may increase with further investigation.

According to Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) alerted the Pentagon on May 22 that the growth on live anthrax on a sample was detected by one of the private lab partners. CDC said that the live anthrax was ‘supposedly inactivated… we felt that it was [an] inactivate and safe shipment’. However, he added that it wasn’t like that.

According to the Department of Defense, the investigation has not found any sign that the samples were sent on account of a planned action and no one was infected by the fatal bacteria. The agency added that there was no threat to the public from the anthrax.

Earlier, the Pentagon said that the anthrax was mistakenly sent to 24 laboratories in 11 states and two foreign countries. After some time, it revealed that the three countries that received the live spores were South Korea, Australia and Canada.

According to Work, “If we wanted to have a field detector kit that would tell us that anthrax was in the area, what we do is we work with labs and we work with partners who we then provide these killed spores with”. He added that they do so in order to develop a detector, which helps if such an organism is encountered on the battlefield.