⚠️ 🇷🇺 A worker at one of Russia’s anti-plague institutes has died from plague in Siberia, triggering a quarantine and emergency containment operation involving nearly 200 people who may have come into contact with her.
The woman, reportedly 27 or 28, worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute. She was hospitalized on September 29 with severe pneumonia, placed on a ventilator and died roughly two days later.
Part of Shelekhov District Hospital has since been placed under quarantine.
Authorities and Russian media have identified at least 197 potential contacts. Reports say 189 have been hospitalized for medical observation and preventive treatment, including 12 being monitored at the anti-plague institute itself.
Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev says identified contacts currently show no signs of illness and laboratory tests have been negative. Some Russian media reports, however, say several people under observation have developed symptoms, with no secondary plague infection confirmed so far.
Russia’s chief sanitary doctor, Anna Popova, traveled to Irkutsk and joined an emergency anti-epidemic commission as authorities deployed containment measures.
How the woman became infected remains under investigation.
Russian media, citing sources, report that she may have accidentally broken a test tube containing live plague bacteria while working at the laboratory and later told doctors about the incident.
Another early account linked the infection to a recent work trip to Buryatia. Buryatia’s governor has rejected that version, saying she had not visited the republic and that the infection was unrelated to its natural plague reservoirs.
There is also an important discrepancy in the official accounts. Irkutsk authorities have so far publicly described the case only as a “particularly dangerous infection,” without naming the pathogen. Buryatia’s governor, however, explicitly said the woman died from plague.
Russian media have described the illness as pneumonic plague, but that specific form has not yet been publicly confirmed by Irkutsk health authorities.
No secondary plague infection has been confirmed at this stage.