A second person has reportedly died from plague in Russia’s Irkutsk region, according to local media reports published Tuesday.
Concerns intensified last week after a female laboratory worker died following reports that she had been exposed to pneumonic plague at a Siberian research facility.
Hundreds of people who had contact with 28-year-old Darya Shipilova were placed in quarantine. She had reportedly told medical workers that she accidentally broke a test tube containing live bacteria at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute. Shipilova died on October 2.
Russian officials maintain that the researcher died from “unidentified pneumonia”. However, neighbouring countries including Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have tightened health checks at their borders amid reports that the illness may have been pneumonic plague.
The suspected infection involves the bacterium associated with the Black Death, the disease that killed millions across Europe during the Middle Ages.
The latest reports claim that a second patient has died at an Irkutsk district hospital after allegedly contracting plague, adding to concerns over the official handling of the outbreak.
Several reports about the suspected cases have reportedly vanished, including coverage by Russia’s Channel 5 broadcaster and the nationally distributed newspaper Kommersant.
Independent Russian outlet The Insider reported on October 2 that federal television network REN TV had also removed all five of its reports concerning plague in the Irkutsk region.
On October 3, the administration of Baikalsk, a city in the Irkutsk region, used Telegram to advise residents against travelling to Shelekhov.
“Due to unofficial information about a confirmed case of plague in a person in the city of Shelekhov, we ask you to limit visits to Shelekhov and nearby settlements until the circumstances surrounding this threat are clarified,” the Baikalsk city administration said.
The message was deleted about two hours later, according to independent local news outlet Lyudi Baikala.
Lab worker Darya Shipilova, 28, reportedly died in Siberia after being exposed to pneumonic plague
She was reportedly working at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute when the exposure occurred
Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov urged the public to rely only on updates issued by Russia’s official health agency, Rospotrebnadzor.
“One should rely on official statements from Rospotrebnadzor rather than listening to various rumours and speculation,” Peskov said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that Washington was monitoring reports of a plague infection, while stressing that the situation was not 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,” Rubio told reporters before departing for 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.”
Speaking Monday, Trump said the United States would “help” Russia respond to the reported disease outbreak.
He said: “Well, we’re looking at it very strongly. We just heard about it, and they call it pneumonia.
‘And pneumonia, you know, years ago you could treat pneumonia easier. The microbes and the germs have gotten stronger disproportionately, but we’ll help them.’
In response, the Kremlin said it is ready to help the US fight outbreaks of infectious diseases such as measles, its health agency said Tuesday.
‘The Russian Federation is ready to assist the US in combating infectious disease outbreaks,’ Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement.
Russia, it stressed, ‘possesses extensive practical and scientific experience in ensuring epidemiological well-being, both domestically and internationally’.
It said Russia was ‘prepared to provide the US side with specialists, laboratory equipment and highly effective diagnostic and preventive tools’, to help address a range of worrying infectious disease outbreaks.
Among other things, it highlighted a ‘significantly worsened’ measles situation in three US states, and a ‘fatal case of plague’ recorded in New Mexico in June.
‘The situation regarding dangerous infectious diseases remains unstable,’ the statement said, also alleging that a outbreaks of typhus and Legionnaires’ disease had been reported.
Meanwhile, Rospotrebnadzor has vehemently denied the existence of a plague outbreak in the region.
A view of the Medical Assistance and Rescue Centre, an infectious diseases hospital, in the town of Shelekhov in the Irkutsk region
A worker in full protective gear is filmed by residents of Shelekhov in Russia’s Irkutsk region
Health officials pictured in the Irkutsk region wearing hazmat suits during the plague response, with a mask mandate also put in place
On October 4, the agency stated that Ms Shipilova died of ‘pneumonia of an unspecified type’ and assured that ‘the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region and the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov is stable’.
However, according to exiled opposition website People of Baikal, doctors in the region are speaking openly about the plague.
Locals have reported seeing people in PPE, including suits and masks, while workers at Irkutsk’s aluminium factories and nursery personnel are required to wear masks.
And online searches for the word ‘plague’ – ‘chuma’ in Russian – are up 5,000 per cent from this time last year, according to The Times.
Up to five hospitals in the Irkutsk area are in ‘epidemic’ mode, according to reports, with hundreds of staff and patients barred from leaving.
City Clinical Hospitals No1, No3, and No10 and the Ivano-Matreninskaya Children’s Hospital have been closed for a three-week quarantine, according to Lyudi Baikala.
Relatives of a woman giving birth at one of Irkutsk’s maternity hospitals also reported to the outlet that it had imposed a quarantine.
Ms Shipilova became unwell while on a field expedition with colleagues in Buryatia, beside Russia’s eastern border with Mongolia.
She was admitted to hospital on September 29 and placed on a ventilator but died three days later in Shelekhov, a satellite city of Irkutsk.
She came into contact with roughly 200 people, who are now being monitored over fears of an outbreak.
It has come to light that Ms Shipilova had personally worked with Yersinia pestis – the bacterium responsible for plague and the medieval Black Death – in laboratories at her workplace.
Immediately after Ms Shipilova’s death, Russia’s chief state sanitary doctor Anna Popova personally flew to Irkutsk to control the response to a ‘particularly dangerous infection’ – yet she has not spoken publicly.
Governor Alexey Tsydenov from neighbouring Buryatia initially referred to Ms Shipilova as ‘the woman who died from plague’, before toning it down to say she ‘may have died from plague’.
Mikhail Favorov, a senior Russian epidemiologist, dismissed the broken test tube explanation, according to the Moscow Times.
Mr 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.’
Regional authorities are implementing a ‘comprehensive set of anti-epidemic measures’, according to Maxim Modin, the mayor of the Shelekhovsky district in eastern Russia, near the Mongolian border.
The inpatient facility at the hospital where the lab technician was treated has been placed under quarantine, and several departments have stopped discharging or admitting patients, Mr Modin added.
A team of Russia’s Irkutsk anti-plague institute during laboratory work
It has come to light that Shipilova had personally worked with Yersinia pestis – the bacterium responsible for plague
Pneumonic plague causes a severe lung infection, with symptoms including fever, shortness of breath and coughing up blood, which typically begin to show between three and seven days after contact.
Fatalities from pneumonic plague drop to around 17 per cent if treated with antibiotics within the first 24 hours of infection. However, the disease is almost always fatal if left untreated.
Reports claim that drugs used to treat the disease are running out in the region, leaving terrified residents piling into pharmacies and medical facilities demanding supplies.
According to the World Health Organisation, pneumonic plague is even more severe than bubonic plague, the form of plague associated with the Black Death, which killed millions across England during the 14th and 15th centuries.
