The death of a Russian infectious disease laboratory worker from an unidentified respiratory illness has prompted Western media to raise the possibility of plague.
Russia's TASS news agency reported on the 4th, citing Rospotrebnadzor, the country's consumer rights protection and public health watchdog, that a worker at an Anti-Plague research institute in the Irkutsk region had been diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown origin. Expanded testing of the patient's samples detected no microorganisms related to the worker's duties, the agency said.
U.S. outlets including Axios and CNN reported that one laboratory worker had died after being diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown cause.
The worker who died was a 28-year-old woman who is believed to have broken a test tube containing pneumonic plague bacteria at the institute on Sept. 25. She was hospitalized on the 29th with severe pneumonia symptoms, and her condition deteriorated rapidly. She died overnight between Oct. 1 and Oct. 2. Russian health authorities designated 200 people who had contact with her for monitoring and isolated them at local medical facilities. No signs of the pneumonia spreading have been reported so far. Igor Kobzev, governor of the Irkutsk region, said that none of those under observation had developed symptoms and that their test results were negative.
The Russian government has yet to release detailed findings, while the U.S. government is monitoring the situation on the assumption that plague is a strong possibility. A State Department official told CNN on the 4th that the department was aware that a death from pneumonic plague in Russia had been raised as a possibility and that it was closely following the situation together with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies. The World Health Organization said plague has a high fatality rate but can be easily treated with antibiotics, and that transmission can be prevented with infection control measures.
After news of the Anti-Plague institute worker's death spread, an aluminum plant near the facility instructed all employees to wear masks as a precaution and urged them not to panic. CNN reported that the repercussions appear to be widening, while Russian health officials have focused first on preventing public alarm. Gennady Onishchenko, a former head of the consumer protection watchdog, told TASS that the infection was most likely not plague, and that even if it were confirmed as plague, low temperatures would prevent it from leading to a large-scale outbreak.
Plague is an acute febrile infectious disease caused by the plague bacterium and is commonly known as the Black Death. Symptoms include sudden fever and chills, and the disease is broadly divided into three forms depending on clinical presentation: bubonic plague, pneumonic plague and septicemic plague. Unlike other forms, which are transmitted through fleas or contact with animals, pneumonic plague can spread between people through respiratory droplets.
