Russia Says It Found No ‘Emergency’ in Plague Lab
New York Times · LC · trust 72/100
New information around the death of a lab worker, including a statement that she had been vaccinated against the plague, came as U.S. officials demanded more data.
Listen · 8:24 min Share full article 31 The entrance to the grounds of the anti-plague institute in Irkutsk, Russia, on Wednesday. An employee of the institute died of a mysterious pneumonia. Credit... Tatyana Makeyeva/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By Paul Sonne
Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian health regulator, issued the statement after the United States urged Moscow to be more forthcoming about the possible public health incident.
The paucity of details in Russian official statements and the absence of international health officials on the scene have led to questions about the Russian government’s insistence that it has the situation under control. The world has remained on high alert about public health threats in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.
On Oct. 2, Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old researcher at the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk, died from pneumonia of an unknown origin at a hospital in Shelekhov, the town where she lived, prompting fears of a pneumonic plague outbreak.
Ms. Shipilova had been vaccinated against the plague and therefore “had immunity to the dangerous infections she worked with,” the Russian health regulator said on Wednesday. The statement implied that Ms. Shipilova had a lower risk of contracting the plague, though vaccination would not definitively rule out becoming ill with the disease.
Rospotrebnadzor also said that two commissions monitoring biological safety had inspected the institute. “No emergency situations were identified during work with pathogenic microorganisms,” the health regulator said.
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