Health authorities in Moscow dismissed reports that a second lab worker fell ill after an employee died of pneumonia in southeastern Siberia.
Russia’s public health watchdog on Thursday denied reports that a lab worker who died in Siberia spread an infection to a second person, rejecting concerns over suspected pneumonic plague.
The 28-year-old woman worked at a plague research institute in Irkutsk, a city in southeastern Siberia. Russia acknowledged on Sunday that she died on Oct. 2 after being diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown origin. Unconfirmed reports within Russia linked the death to pneumonic plague, a severe form of the disease that can spread between people.
The health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said extensive testing showed no sign that the worker’s illness came from pathogens she handled at the laboratory. The agency said it told the World Health Organization that no plague cases have been recorded in the Irkutsk region, calling reports of a second sick employee fake. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also pushed back on Wednesday, telling reporters that ‘the vast majority of what the media is reporting regarding this situation is false information.’
Calls for transparency from health officials
World Health Organization officials have urged Moscow to provide more facts about the death and the emergency measures deployed in the region. WHO Director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management Maria Van Kerkhove said Wednesday that the agency doesn’t know what caused the death or how the woman became infected.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency asked Russia to clarify reports from two media outlets regarding a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause. The Irkutsk facility was founded about a century ago to study plague in Siberia, where the disease occurs naturally among wild animals. Rospotrebnadzor said the worker had been vaccinated against dangerous infections and stated that an inspection found biological safety rules were observed at the institute.
Low risk assessed for the United States
The United States and the European Union have joined calls for Russian transparency, though U.S. officials described the domestic danger as minimal. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Erica Schwartz said Wednesday that the risk to the United States from the suspected pneumonic plague case is ‘extremely low.’
Schwartz said the CDC is working with the State, Defense, and Homeland Security departments to monitor travelers arriving from the area. The agency maintains a health station at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to screen passengers coming from the Siberian region. Direct flights between Russia and the United States have been suspended since 2022, and a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told Reuters that about 200 people travel between the Siberian region and the U.S. each year.
