US says it is watching Siberian plague institute death as Moscow urges calm

Donald Trump has said the US is looking very closely at the death of a Russian lab technician at a plague research centre in Siberia, while secretary of state Marco Rubio said Washington was watching the case amid concerns it could spread but that there was no cause for alarm.

The governor of Irkutsk said the woman died of pneumonia of undetermined aetiology and that no micro-organisms linked to her work had been found in her biological samples, Patrick Jackson reported for the BBC.

Unconfirmed reports suggested she fell ill either after breaking a test tube containing the pathogen or after a field trip to a region where plague occurs naturally among wild rodents.

Asked what Washington would do about the risk of plague spreading from Russia, Trump said he had not spoken to the Kremlin about it. He said he hated to see Russia dealing with it and that the US would help anyone with that kind of problem.

Governor Igor Kobzev said no other staff from the plague institute had sought medical help since the death, quoting Russia's consumer and health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor. The watchdog said a biological safety team had inspected the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk and found no emergency. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged people to rely on the watchdog's statements rather than rumours.

Nearly 200 people who had contact with the woman are under medical observation. Rubio said that a lab worker appeared to have been infected, and that there was concern the infection could have spread at least internally, as shown by the quarantines, and that it could spread quickly if it got out. He said it was a reason for focus and for keeping an eye on the situation, which the US was doing.

Russian media named the woman as Daria, in her late twenties. She had apparently visited Buryatia, on the border with Mongolia. The governor of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, said she had not been to his republic and that her infection was unrelated to it.

The plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, which killed up to half of Europe's population in the 14th century as the Black Death, is found among rodents such as marmots in the area. The institute was founded just over 100 years ago in response to an outbreak in the 1920s.

Dr Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme that pneumonic plague was almost always fatal if untreated but could be overcome with antibiotics. He said it could spread from person to person, which was the reason for the concern, but that people should not think of lockdowns and Covid, as that was not going to happen here.

The plague had not gone away and remained a threat to human health in some parts of the world, which was why it was studied, he said. Asked whether the pathogen might have been studied as a bioweapon, he agreed it was possible, but said he thought the earlier explanation was more likely.

According to the World Health Organization, pneumonic plague has a very short incubation period, sometimes as little as 24 hours, and can be fatal if not diagnosed and treated early.

People can be infected through infected flea bites, contact with bodily fluids or contaminated materials, or inhaling respiratory particles. Symptoms include shortness of breath and coughing, often with blood-tainted phlegm.

Additional source: The Moscow Times