Worries of a deadly plague case in Siberia rippled as far as Washington this week, prompting US President Donald Trump to say the United States was tracking developments closely and was ready to assist — even as Russian authorities moved to tamp down the reports.
The alarm was triggered by claims that pneumonic plague had killed Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician working at an anti-plague institute in Siberia’s Irkutsk region.
“We’re looking at it very strongly, we just heard about it,” Mr Trump told reporters at the White House when asked what Washington was going to do about the risk of plague coming from Russia.
“We’ll help them, we’ll help them as much as we can.”
The Russian outlet People of Baikal, citing unnamed sources described as close to the regional security services, reported that the woman may have become infected with pneumonic plague after a test tube broke.
Other news organisations also pointed to a possible connection between her death and a laboratory accident at the facility.
People of Baikal further reported that as many as 200 people who might have been in contact with her were placed under quarantine, though it did not provide additional details.
Russian officials, however, insisted that tests conducted after her death did not find evidence of plague.
Irkutsk Regional Governor Igor Kobzev said an inspection by a special expert commission in the region concluded that “the cause of death was pneumonia of undetermined aetiology”.
Writing on Telegram, he said Russia’s consumer and health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor had determined after testing that “no microorganisms linked to the young woman’s professional work were found in her biological samples”.
He also said there had been “no new cases of staff from the anti-plague institute seeking medical attention” since the woman’s death.
Mr Kobzev described the sanitary-epidemiological situation in Irkutsk as “stable”.
“The situation remains under our control and that of the experts.”
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‘Rumours and speculations’
When questioned about the reports yesterday, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged journalists to “rely on Rospotrebnadzor’s official statements rather than … rumours and speculations”.
Plague is a bacterial disease that appears in different forms. One is pneumonic plague — regarded as the most contagious — which can spread through respiratory transmission, while bubonic plague is typically passed on through infected fleas.
The World Health Organization says pneumonic plague can be fatal if treatment is not started early.
The developments are also likely to be scrutinised closely in the United States, where the Covid-19 pandemic that began during Mr Trump’s first term remains a sharp political and public-health memory.
Mr Trump has strongly backed the theory that the disease was due to a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington was keeping watch on the situation in Russia but did not see a “cause for alarm”.
“There’s very limited travel between the US and Russia, obviously, but like anything else, something like that gets out, it could quickly spread,” Mr Rubio told reporters before taking off for a visit to Iceland.
“So we’re watching and monitoring it closely. I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause to just keep an eye on it. And we’re doing that.”
Experts said the response described in Russia appeared “proportionate”.
“It appears that measures are being implemented to quarantine any potential contacts and prevent any onward transmission,” Malick Gibani, clinical associate professor in bacterial vaccinology, Imperial College London, said in a commentary.
