No one has been diagnosed with a naturally occurring case of smallpox since 1977, and scientists are  determined to keep it that way, despite their latest finding. 

On July 1, a government scientist unearthed six sealed, glass vials of smallpox in a forgotten cardboard box at Maryland’s National Institutes of Health in Bethesda.

While the disease appears to be wholly contained, people are nonetheless concerned, as this is the first citing of the unaccounted for strains of the disease in decades. 

As both a rare biological find—smallpox is currently only held in one laboratory in Atlanta and one in Russia—and a potential health hazard, what to do with the newly discovered smallpox samples remains up for debate. 

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