2024 Annual Surveillance Report on Exposure Incidents

Laboratory Incident Notification Canada’s annual report, titled Surveillance of laboratory exposures to human pathogens and toxins, Canada, 2024, was published in the December 2025 issue of Canada Communicable Disease Report. The report provides insight into confirmed exposure incidents reported by licence holders in 2024.

In 2024:

• there were 71 confirmed exposure incidents involving 132 individuals
• there were 67.5 confirmed exposure incidents per 1000 active licences, a slight increase compared to 2023 (61.5 incidents per 1000 active licences)
• two suspected and one confirmed laboratory-acquired infection were reported

Among these reported incidents:

• most involved Risk Group 2 pathogens (64%)
• bacteria were the most common pathogen type (64%), followed by viruses (17.3%)
• microbiology was the most frequent activity being performed at the time of exposure (67.6%)
• procedure-related events were the most common type of occurrence (21.4%)
• human factors were the leading root cause (62%)
• the median reporting delay was five days

The public health sector had the highest exposure incident rate, while the private industry/business sector had the highest mean number of affected individuals per incident.

Most affected individuals were technicians and technologists (76.5%), with a median of 8.5 years of laboratory experience.

You can read the full report here.

Remember that reporting exposure incidents is a legal requirement under the Human Pathogens and Toxins Act. Reporting an incident will not trigger enforcement actions, but failing to report one may.

Initial actions can include the issuance of a Notice of Non-Compliance, which becomes part of your facility's compliance history. Depending on the frequency or severity of non-compliance, enforcement actions can escalate along the Compliance and Enforcement Continuum as per the Centre for Biosecurity Compliance and Enforcement Policy.

If you have questions, please send an email to biosafety.biosecurite@phac-aspc.gc.ca.