World health body wants more details on plague lab death in Russia
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The World Health Organisation has urged the Russian government to provide more information about how a laboratory worker died from suspected pneumonic plague.
The UN agency’s director of epidemic and pandemic management, Maria Van Kerkhove, said on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) she is yet to learn what the “causative agent” was behind the woman’s death on October 2.
A woman with her child walks past the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk, Russia, on Wednesday, October7. AP Photo
Unconfirmed reports in Russia blamed the fatality on pneumonic plague – a less common but severe form of plague that can spread from person to person.
“We don’t understand how she was infected,” Van Kerkhove said.
“We need information in a timely way. We need regular information. We need answers to the follow-up of the questions that we have asked.”
“We have posed these questions to our colleagues in the Russian Federation. In fairness, they have responded. We’ve gone back with more questions,” she added.
Russia’s public health agency, Rospotrebnadzor, does not link the case to pneumonic plague.
It maintains the lab worker had contracted pneumonia of “unknown” origin and that “extensive” testing found no evidence her illness was caused by any of the pathogens.
Russian media this week identified the dead researcher who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East as 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, who was reportedly hospitalised on September 29.
She is believed to have died at a hospital in Shelekhov, a town about 20km south-west of Irkutsk, late last week.
Lab workers at the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East. This undated photo was released in 2019. Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute of Siberia and Far East
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Russian authorities had indicated that no case of plague had recently been reported in the Irkutsk region, and that they had placed about 200 contacts in quarantine.
US President Donald Trump said he would discuss the laboratory case during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, the Kremlin leader’s 74th birthday.
The US leader was asked if the Siberian situation was similar to dealing with China on the Covid pandemic during his first term, when Chinese officials gave few details.
“China didn’t say much and Russia is not saying much either, but they do say they have it very much under control,” Trump said.
– with Associated Press
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