The White House is tracking a reported plague outbreak in Russia after a laboratory technician died and around 200 people who may have been exposed were placed under observation.
A Trump administration official told Axios on Sunday that the administration was “aware, monitoring the outbreak, and assessing options.”
Darya Shipilova, 28, was reportedly employed at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute in Siberia when she was exposed to the bacteria that causes pneumonic plague.
According to the news outlet Lyudi Baikala, Shipilova told medical workers that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria.
She later fell ill while taking part in a field expedition with colleagues in Buryatia, near Russia’s eastern border with Mongolia.
Shipilova was hospitalized on September 29 and placed on a ventilator. She died two days later.
Around 200 people are believed to have had contact with her and are now being monitored amid concerns over a possible plague outbreak.
Three hospitals in the region have been placed under heightened security measures, while authorities have introduced a mask mandate.
Lab worker Darya Shipilova, 28, died in Siberia from pneumonic plague after allegedly breaking a test tube
Health officials have been seen wearing hazmat suits in Russia’s Irkutsk region during the plague response, while a mask mandate has also been introduced
Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev said those under observation had not developed symptoms and had tested negative for the disease, according to The Moscow Times.
The hospital where Shipilova was treated is one of the facilities placed under quarantine. The other hospitals are caring for people who came into contact with her.
Pneumonic plague is a serious lung infection. Its symptoms can include fever, breathing difficulties and coughing up blood, and they generally appear between three and seven days after exposure.
The fatality rate for pneumonic plague falls to about 17 percent when antibiotic treatment begins within the first 24 hours of infection.
Without treatment, however, the disease is almost always deadly.
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Claims have also emerged suggesting that Russian authorities are trying to conceal the full circumstances surrounding the incident.
Reports further allege that supplies of drugs used to treat the disease are becoming scarce in the region, prompting anxious residents to crowd pharmacies and medical facilities in search of medication.
The Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute was established in 1934
A Trump administration official told Axios on Sunday that the administration was “aware, monitoring the outbreak, and assessing options”
Mikhail Favorov, a senior Russian epidemiologist, rejected the account involving a broken test tube, according to The Moscow Times.
Favorov said: ‘It’s laughable. Someone working at the Anti-Plague Institute in Irkutsk wears a protective anti-plague suit.
‘If you break a test tube, the likelihood of infection is actually very low. In short, it doesn’t matter to the general public – they’ll believe the “broken test tube” story.’
He added: ‘It’s absolutely hair-raising. We will not be told what really happened.’
Pneumonic plague is one of three types of plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.
It is transferred as a result of breathing in airborne droplets from another person.
Septicaemic plague causes a blood infection as a result of flea bites or handling infected animals. Symptoms include internal bleeding and tissue turning black due to necrosis.
The third is the bubonic plague – also known as the Black Death and notoriously responsible for the Great Plague of 1665, which killed at least a third of the population of Europe at the time.
It is also caused by flea bites and causes fever, chills and painful, swollen lymph nodes known as buboes.
Our News Outlet has reached out to the White House, State Department, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for comment.
