The United States is urgently calling for answers from Moscow on the reported plague death of a laboratory technician.
President Donald Trump has said he will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the possible outbreak that is said to have taken at least two lives in the country.
‘We have officially requested additional information from the Russian government,’ a State Department spokesperson said Tuesday, adding that Washington was ‘in official communication with other countries around the world to share information’.
The request for information was sent via a confidential diplomatic communication, known as a demarche, according to a source close to the matter.
It comes as fights are breaking out for antibiotics across pharmacies in Russia’s quarantine zone.
Panic broke out last week when Darya Shipilova, 28, a lab worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, reportedly told medical staff that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria.
Russian officials have claimed Shipilova died from an ‘unidentified pneumonia,’ and noted that there has been evidence her colleagues had COVID and the common cold.
But reports suggest she was infected with pneumonic plague caused by the ‘Black Death’ bacterium, which infamously killed millions in Europe during the Middle Ages.
Panic broke out last week when Darya Shipilova, 28, a lab worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, reportedly told medical staff that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria
Health officials pictured in the Irkutsk region wearing hazmat suits during the plague response, with a mask mandate also put in place
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Hundreds of people she came into contact with and five hospitals, including a maternity unit, were placed into quarantine.
Shipilova was hospitalised and died from the infection on October 2.
Local media has since claimed that a second person has died of the plague in the Irkutsk region.
Over the weekend, residents rushed to buy antibiotics at pharmacies in Irkutsk and Shelekhov, a satellite city of Irkutsk.
‘There were fights at some pharmacies on Saturday,’ an employee of the plague institute told news outlet Lyudi Baikala.
‘They cleaned the pharmacies out of antibiotics! Even the really, really old ones. People were panicking because everywhere you heard the words “plague” and “pneumonic”.’
City Clinical Hospitals No1, No3, and No10 and the Ivano-Matreninskaya Children’s Hospital have been closed for a three-week quarantine.
A psychiatric clinic in Irkutsk and the Irkutsk Perinatal Centre have also introduced access restrictions.
On October 5, Ulyana arrived at the maternity hospital for a checkup. Her mother, who accompanied her, was not allowed inside.
‘[At the hospital] they explained that there’s still unconfirmed information about a virus that might even be worse than coronavirus, and they don’t yet know what kind of virus it is or how to handle it, with the babies being so little,’ Ulyana said.
‘That’s why they introduced the quarantine. And no one knows how long it’ll last.’
On October 6, the US Embassy in Russia issued a health alert regarding the ‘suspected pneumonic plague’ and updated its travel advice for Americans.
‘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,’ the statement said.
‘US citizens planning travel to Russia are again strongly advised not to travel to Russia due to risk of wrongful detention and security concerns.’
Russian authorities have denied that they are imposing anti-plague measures and played down the reports of the incident at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute last week.
But US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the World Health Organisation’s head called on Moscow to be open about the situation.
During a trip to Iceland, Rubio said: ‘We encourage Russia to be transparent and share more information with the world so that all of us could react accordingly and appropriately.’
Trump later said he would be speaking to Putin about what happened.
‘I have a call scheduled, yes,’ Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if he had spoken to Putin, adding that it would happen ‘very soon’.
Asked what US intelligence agencies were saying about the situation, Trump said: ‘We’re in very deep discussions. We’ll be able to report on it probably tomorrow.’
Lyudi Baikala reported Friday that Shipilova may have contracted pneumonic plague from a broken test tube.
Other media reported a possible link between her death and a lab accident at the facility.
The outlet also said up to 200 people with whom she may have had contact were under quarantine.
But Russian authorities say the cause of death is not confirmed and health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has denied claims circulating in a document online that special measures had been put in place.
‘We wish to clarify that the document and information in question do not originate from official sources and are untrue,’ it said on Telegram.
Russian officials said postmortem tests had not detected the disease.
Irkutsk Regional Governor Igor Kobzev said Monday that an inspection by health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor had found the woman died of pneumonia and the cause was ‘undetermined’.
‘No microorganisms linked to the young woman’s professional work were found in her biological samples,’ he said, adding that no other staff at the institute had sought medical attention since her death.
WHO said that an update received Tuesday from Russia stressed that ‘no case of this dangerous disease has been recorded in the city of Irkutsk’.
But its director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later urged Moscow to be transparent, saying WHO had ‘requested further information’ on the cause of the pneumonia case and other details.
‘Timely, complete and transparent information sharing under the International Health Regulations is essential to clarify conflicting reports and enable an accurate assessment of potential public health risks,’ he wrote on X.
Plague is a bacterial disease that can occur in several forms, including pneumonic plague, which is the most contagious type and can be transmitted by respiratory means. Bubonic plague is transmitted by infected fleas.
Pneumonic plague, which causes lung failure, can be fatal if not treated early, according to WHO.
Trump said Monday he was ready to help Russia if needed.
But in an apparent response to Trump’s offer, the Russian watchdog said Tuesday that Moscow was prepared to assist the US in combating its own outbreaks of infectious diseases.
It highlighted a ‘significantly worsened’ measles situation in three US states, and a ‘fatal case of plague’ recorded in New Mexico in June, among other things.
Measles cases have increased under the Trump administration, in which vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr serves as health secretary.
An international conference on plague and other infectious diseases will be held in Irkutsk on October 21-22, although organisers said it was ‘unrelated to the recent death of an employee of the anti-plague institute’.
Shipilova had personally worked with Yersinia pestis – the bacterium responsible for plague and the medieval Black Death – in laboratories at her workplace.
Immediately after 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 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.’
The administration of Baykalsk, a city in the Irkutsk region, published a Telegram post on October 3 urging residents not to travel 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 Baykalsk city administration said in a post.
It deleted the post two hours later, Lyudi Baikala reported.
The national television channel REN TV also deleted five social media posts about the spread of plague in Shelekhov.
