The World Health Organization has asked Russia for more information about the death of a 28-year-old laboratory worker at a Siberian institute that studies plague, while Russian authorities say testing has found no cases of the disease and no risk of an epidemic.
Darya Shipilova died on Friday after developing severe pneumonia from a cause that authorities have yet to establish.
Shipilova worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East. Her death led authorities to quarantine about 200 people and send senior public health officials to the Irkutsk region.
Russia’s health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said almost 5,000 laboratory tests had detected no dangerous pathogens among people who had contact with Shipilova. About 90% of those initially placed in quarantine had been released.
The agency said Shipilova had received vaccinations against the dangerous infections she worked with. Authorities have not established what caused the pneumonia that led to her death or how she became ill.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organisation had requested further information from Russia about the cause of the pneumonia, the pathogen that prompted public health measures and reports concerning another institute employee with pneumonia of undetermined origin.
“Timely, complete and transparent information sharing under the International Health Regulations is essential,” Tedros said in a statement on X.
The WHO said Russian authorities had reported that no plague cases had recently been registered in the Irkutsk region. The organisation has assessed the risk as moderate to low within Irkutsk, low for Russia and very low for the wider WHO European region.
Russian authorities told the WHO through an international health notification system that testing had found no dangerous infectious disease pathogens among Shipilova’s contacts.
The Kremlin said Russia had followed established procedures in informing the WHO.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected reports surrounding the case and urged the public and media to rely on information from Rospotrebnadzor.
Pneumonic plague affects the lungs and spreads between people through respiratory particles. The WHO says the disease has an incubation period as short as 24 hours. Treatment is effective when infection is identified and treated in time.
The case has also drawn attention from Washington. US officials have called for more information from Moscow.
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he expected to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the case “very soon”. Peskov said on Wednesday that no telephone call between the two presidents had been scheduled.
HT