Peskov tells Russians to trust Rospotrebnadzor over plague lab rumours

Nearly 200 contacts monitored after death at Irkutsk plague institute

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged the Russian public to rely on Rospotrebnadzor’s official statements rather than to listen to various rumours about the death of a laboratory technician at the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk. Russian media reported last week that nearly 200 people known to have had contact with the dead woman were under medical observation as a precaution.

The technician, identified in Russian media as Daria and reported to be in her late twenties, had recently visited the Buryatia region on the border with Mongolia, where the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis is found among rodents such as marmots. The Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East was founded just over 100 years ago in response to an outbreak in the 1920s.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States was watching and monitoring the case closely, telling reporters there was concern the incident could have led to the spread of pneumonic plague but no cause for alarm. “It seems that there was a worker at the lab that was infected and there’s concern that that, you know, could have spread, at least internally - you’ve seen them do quarantine of this and that nature,” Rubio said. “If something like that gets out, it can quickly spread. So we’re watching and monitoring it closely. I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and the cause to just keep an eye on it and we’re doing that.”

Irkutsk governor Igor Kobzev announced the cause of death as “pneumonia of undetermined etiology” and said that “no micro-organisms” linked to the woman’s work had been found “in her biological samples.” Russia’s consumer and health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said a biological safety team had inspected the institute and found no emergency situation there. No other cases of staff from the plague institute seeking medical attention since her death had been reported, Kobzev said, quoting Rospotrebnadzor.

Unconfirmed reports had suggested the woman fell ill either after breaking a test tube containing the pathogen or following a field trip to a region where plague is found naturally among wild rodents. The plague bacterium Yersinia pestis, which killed up to half the population of Europe in the 14th Century when it was known as the Black Death, is found among rodents such as marmots in the area.

Dr Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme that the pneumonic version of Yersinia pestis was nearly always fatal if left untreated, but could be overcome with antibiotics. “Pneumonic plague can transmit from person to person and that is why there is the concern around this,” he said.

Clarke added: “People think, ‘Oh the plague, that’s gone, that went hundreds of years ago,’ but it hasn’t. It’s still around and in certain parts of the world, it’s a threat to human health and that’s why they need to study it.” He also pushed back against comparisons to Covid-19 lockdowns, saying: “But of course people’s thought with any outbreak of infectious disease at all runs to… lockdowns and Covid and that is just not what’s going to happen here.”

Asked whether the pathogen might have been studied for potential use as a bio-weapon, Clarke said it was possible but that the more likely explanation was the woman’s research work. “Because this is Russia people’s thoughts are running to that, but I think my earlier explanation is probably more likely,” he said.