Local independent media have reported quarantines in the area, but this has not been officially confirmed. That has raised many questions about what caused the woman’s death and how much reason there really is to worry about plague.
What is known about Daria Shipilova’s death
Daria Shipilova, 28, who worked at the anti-plague institute of Siberia and the Far East, was admitted to hospital in late September. Three days later she died in the town of Shelekhov, outside the regional capital, Irkutsk. Various reports give the date as 2 October. The BBC has not been able to confirm this.
A quarantine was then imposed at the hospital, masks were made compulsory at a local aluminium plant and a public gathering in Irkutsk was cancelled.
On Friday the governor of the Irkutsk region, Igor Kobzev, said Russia’s chief sanitary doctor had gone to Irkutsk to investigate “a suspected case of an especially dangerous infection”. People who had been in contact with Shipilova were also placed under observation. According to the Russian newspaper Izvestia, about 197 people were kept under medical observation.
The same day the governor of the neighbouring Buryatia region said the laboratory worker had died of plague. Speculation then began about a possible escape of the germ from the institute’s laboratory.
An unverified report by a local journalist claimed Shipilova fell ill after breaking a test tube. No independent evidence for this has been found either.
What is now being said about the cause
Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer protection and public health watchdog, later tried to clarify its position on the claims spreading about her death. This week it said the laboratory worker died of a new type of pneumonia of unknown cause, and that tests had found no “microorganism related to her professional activity”.
A pro-government federal news outlet then deleted five posts about the possible plague case, and the authorities of the town of Baikalsk withdrew a message advising against travel to Shelekhov because of a possible plague infection.
Amid the impression that the authorities are coordinating their messages to play the situation down, the local independent outlet People of Baikal reported, citing its sources, that at least four hospitals in Irkutsk had been closed for a three-week quarantine. This has not been officially confirmed.
BBC News Russian has learned that the Irkutsk anti-plague institute is due to host an international plague control conference in late October with scientists from China, Mongolia and several former Soviet countries. The BBC has contacted the institute to confirm whether it will go ahead.
What is plague?
Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. In the 14th century about half the people of Europe died of it, in the pandemic known as the Black Death.
Plague exists on every continent except Oceania. The bacterium is also found in rodents such as marmots in Russia’s Buryatia region.
People can catch it from flea bites, contact with the body fluids of infected animals or contaminated material, and respiratory droplets.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the pneumonic form has a very short incubation period, sometimes only 24 hours, and can be fatal if not detected and treated early. Its symptoms include breathing difficulty and coughing, sometimes with blood-stained sputum.
Whatever the cause of Shipilova’s death, Russian science journalist Irina Yakutenko thinks the risk of an epidemic from plague is very low. She told a BBC Russian podcast that developed countries do not have the conditions needed to sustain a wide spread of plague. Common antibiotics work against it, she said, and because the disease is now so rare there has been little chance for widespread antibiotic resistance to develop.
The international response
A WHO spokesperson told Politico the organisation had contacted the Russian authorities to assess the situation and its implications for international public health. A European Commission spokesperson said experts at the ECDC, Europe’s infectious disease agency, were also monitoring it.
President Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States was “looking very seriously” at the reports of a possible plague case in Russia, and indicated the US was ready to help contain it. He said he had scheduled a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the death at the Siberian plague research centre.
On Wednesday evening Trump told journalists he did not think it was a biological weapons incident, and that more would be known “very soon”. Citing the Russian authorities, he said that by their account the situation was under control and the US hoped that was true. The US was continuing “deep discussions” with Russia on the matter, he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no such phone call had been scheduled, though he welcomed Trump’s offer of help. He told the BBC’s Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, on Tuesday that it is always nice when someone offers help, and that only official information about the situation in Irkutsk is to be trusted.
What claims are spreading online
Conflicting claims about the incident are spreading on social media in Russia and around the world.
The BBC has identified at least five Instagram accounts, with about 169,000 followers between them, that spread unverified information about a supposed second victim. Posting near-identical messages in Russian, they claimed that a colleague of Shipilova named Viktor Naklonenny had also died.
A source close to Rospotrebnadzor did not confirm the claim. The BBC has contacted the agency directly for comment. The anti-plague institute declined to comment.
These unverified claims were later published by several international media outlets, including the UK’s Daily Mail, which cited Russian “local media” as the source.
Reaction to the posts online has been mixed. Some voiced concern for public health; others accused the accounts of spreading misinformation.
The BBC has also identified a number of unverified claims on X, some viewed millions of times. One blogger claimed to have received a message from a friend saying St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, could go into lockdown; the post was viewed more than six million times. Neither the city’s authorities nor local media have reported any plague case or prospect of a lockdown there.
Another post, viewed 11.3 million times, claimed that “pneumonic plague that has just leaked from a Russian lab is about 100 times more deadly than Covid”.
Untreated pneumonic plague can be extremely deadly. But it is unlikely to spread among people as widely as Covid did, largely because plague can be treated with antibiotics.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report