Former CDC Director Raises Questions Over Russia’s Research on a ‘Manipulated’ Plague Strain

A former CDC director has voiced concerns that a suspected plague case in Russia could involve a “manipulated” strain of the disease.

Dr Robert Redfield, who headed the agency at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, told NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas Reports that his concern extended beyond the infected woman to the authorities’ response.

“I’m concerned because beyond the woman [herself] that got infected, I’m looking at the response,” he said. Redfield noted that pneumonic plague is extremely rare but can kill within 24 hours. Although it does not typically spread easily between people, he said Russian authorities had responded aggressively by closing five hospitals and isolating more than 200 people.

“That’s not pneumonic plague,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to me that this was wild-type plague.”

Redfield also said it would be “unlikely that [a lab worker] would have died” from wild-type plague, referring to an unmodified strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the disease.

“If she was working in a plague lab and had an accident, there would have been a protocol for her to go on antibiotics within 24 hours [of exposure to plague-causing bacteria], and she would have likely responded effectively,” he said.

He added that a manipulated strain could potentially explain why treatment may not have worked. “If the plague that she was working with had been manipulated to not be sensitive to antibiotics, which some of the bio-offensive programs that the Russians have done… have changed the susceptibility of these organisms to traditional antibiotics, that would explain why maybe they didn’t work,” he said.

Alarm spread internationally last week after Darya Shipilova, 28, a laboratory worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, reportedly told colleagues that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria capable of causing pneumonic plague.

According to reports, more than 200 people who had come into contact with her were placed in quarantine. Five hospitals in the region, including a maternity unit, were also reportedly closed.

Russian officials have said Shipilova died from “unidentified pneumonia.” They also reported evidence that some of her colleagues had Covid and the common cold.

However, local media reports and comments from regional officials have suggested that she may have contracted pneumonic plague. The illness is caused by Yersinia pestis, the bacterium associated with the “Black Death” that killed millions of people in Europe during the Middle Ages.

There is currently no evidence confirming that Shipilova was infected with a manipulated strain of plague.

Shipilova was hospitalized on September 29 and initially placed on a ventilator after doctors suspected she had a severe form of Covid, according to Siberia Realities, the Siberian service of the US-funded broadcaster Radio Liberty. She died on October 2.

It remains unclear whether she received antibiotics. The disease can generally be treated successfully when antibiotics are administered during its early stages.

Russian epidemiologist Mikhail Favorov told Echo FM, regarded as one of the last independent Russian radio stations and broadcasting from Berlin, that doctors may have misidentified the infection because no plague case had been recorded in the region for at least a decade.

Reports have also differed over how Shipilova became ill.

Local media reports said she may have been infected after breaking a test tube in the laboratory. Separate reports from the Russian Telegram channel Mash claimed she was hospitalized after returning from a work trip to Buryatia, a region bordering Irkutsk, where the research center is based.

Local media has since claimed that a second person has died of the plague in the Irkutsk region, but this has not been confirmed by the authorities.

MUST READ: Baseball Star Roger Clemens to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom

Speaking today, US President Donald Trump, following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has said he is confident that the case was not caused by a manipulated strain of the plague. 

He told reporters at the White House: ‘We don’t think so. We’re going to find out.’

He added that Russian officials had assured him the situation was ‘very much under control’ but that they were ‘not saying much.’ 

Speaking at the WSJ health summit in Washington DC today, CDC director Erica Schwartz said she was ‘very confident’ that the threat to the US from the suspected plague outbreak was ‘extremely low.’

Amid fears that the suspected outbreak could spread, some countries along Russia’s border have started to tighten health controls for new entrants.

Yesterday, the US Embassy in Moscow renewed its advice not to travel to the country, saying in a statement posted online: ‘The State Department’s Level 4 Travel Advisory (Do Not Travel) for Russia remains in place and states US citizens currently in Russia should depart immediately. 

‘US citizens planning travel to Russia are again strongly advised not to travel to Russia due to risk of wrongful detention and security concerns.’

Internationally, the World Health Organization and other health bodies have appealed to Russia for more information about the suspected plague case.

The Irkutsk facility at the center of the reported fatality sits within a much broader Soviet-era scientific infrastructure that has links to military research.

During the 1970s and 1980s, reports suggest that Soviet scientists studied natural strains of the plague at the research center that could have military uses.

Dr Ken Alibek, a top researcher in Russia’s germ-warfare machine before defecting to the US in 1992, told Our News Outlet that the Soviet Union was previously working to create antibiotic-resistant versions of the plague bacterium for a potential bioweapon.

‘If amongst people who are quarantining, you’ll see more people dying, it can be antibiotic resistant,’ Alibek said.

Plague can take several forms, but its most dangerous is pneumonic plague, which infects the lungs and causes them to fill with blood and fluid, leaving someone struggling to breathe.

Without early treatment, it is nearly always fatal.

Symptoms erupt within a day of infection and doctors warn that the bacteria can be spread from person to person via respiratory transmission.

But scientists say it is rare for it to spread between people. The CDC says sustained face-to-face contact with an infected person is needed for it to spread through the air. 

The infection is also normally easily treated using antibiotics, although these need to be administered early to ensure they are effective.

About 1,000 to 2,000 cases of plague are recorded globally each year, which can also be spread by fleas and by handling the carcasses of wild animals that have been infected with the bacterium that causes the disease. 

It is not clear how many of these patients die from the disease. 

In Russia, cases have previously been reported in its Far East where the Yersinia pestis pathogen is endemic. 

In July, Mongolia’s National Center for Zoonotic Diseases (NCZD) confirmed a human plague case in Khovd province in the western part of the country. The center warned that 17 out of 21 provinces in the country were classified as plague-risk areas. 

In the US, the CDC says that about seven cases of the plague are recorded every year, mostly in northern New Mexico and Arizona where the ‘Black Death’ bacterium infects small mammals. It is not clear how many of these cases are fatal.