#19,358
Over the past 72 hours there has been a media frenzy over a reported plague death, supposedly in a Russian laboratory worker, and the subsequent quarantining of roughly 200 contacts.
While headlines have often been bombastic, official information has been sparse. My attempts to access Russia's Rospotrebnadzor - their National Health Agency's website - even using a VPN, have been unsuccessful.
Complicating matters, the Russian media has presented several conflicting stories. Given the `tabloid' nature of many Russian news outlets - and the lack of official information - it is difficult to separate the fact from the fiction.
The Moscow Times' - which is one of the more reliable sources for Russian news - reported on Friday:
Citing `other news reports' and a statement on the social media platform VKontakte by Alexei Tsydenov, head of the neighboring republic of Buryatia - they reported:
According to exiled news outlet Lyudi Baikala (People of Baikal) and pro-Kremlin broadcaster REN TV, the lab worker was a 27 or 28 year-old female, who reported that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria.`Health authorities in Siberia’s Irkutsk region have placed nearly 200 people under medical observation after a laboratory worker died from plague.'
They go on to say she was hospitalized on Tuesday with severe pneumonia, was placed on a ventilator, and died on Thursday.
While this reads like the opening to a Michael Crichton novel, we've seen lab leaks and handling `mishaps' before (see here, here, here, here, and here), so it is plausible. It would seem, however, that a number of important BSL biosecurity measures would have to be breached.
A Latvian-based media outlet (https://meduza.io/) reported several alternate scenarios involving recent field trips where exposure might have occurred.
Local governments have posted, then removed, warnings (see original and translation below) from social media sites.
Perhaps most credible are reports of a high-level meeting between local and federal officials (including Anna Popova, Chief State Sanitary Physician of the Russian Federation). This (translated) post from Irkutsk regional governor Igor Kobzev was posted on Oct 2nd.
An extraordinary meeting of the regional sanitary and anti-epidemic commission was held with the participation of Anna Yuryevna Popova, Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the Russian Federation. The reason for the meeting was information about a suspected case of a particularly dangerous infection in a resident of the region.
In this regard, Rospotrebnadzor has organized and is implementing a full range of anti-epidemic measures. At the SPEC meeting, an operational action plan was approved and instructed to strictly implement all its sections and provisions.
I would like to inform you that all identified contacts have been placed under medical observation. Currently, these contacts show no signs of illness, and laboratory test results are negative.
The situation is under strict monitoring by Rospotrebnadzor and the Irkutsk Regional Government. I ask everyone to rely solely on official information.
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58.9K edited Oct 2 at 01:08
The best round-up of news reports, and analysis, I've found is from the BEACON biothreats surveillance platform, housed by Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases (CEID).
RFI: Fatal laboratory-acquired infection in Irkutsk Region, Russia; possible pneumonic plague; 197 contacts hospitalized for observation
Sat 03 Oct 2026
While I would hope we'll get more details soon, the willingness of many countries to share sensitive infectious disease information has eroded over the past few years (see No News Is . . . Now Commonplace).
Assuming this involves a `plain vanilla' Yersinia pestis - and treatment is begun promptly - it should respond to antibiotics. We've seen outbreaks of pneumonic plague before in Madagascar, Mongolia, and even the United States, and all were eventually brought under control.
Plague can present in three forms: bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic. If untreated, bubonic plague can evolve to a more transmissible pneumonic plague.
- Bubonic Plague (Yersinia pestis) - carried by rats, squirrels, and other small rodents, and transmitted by fleas - sets up in the lymphatic system, resulting in the tell-tale buboes, or swollen lymph glands in the the groin, armpits, and neck.
- Less commonly pneumonic plague may develop, when the infected individual develops a severe pneumonia, with coughing and hemoptysis (expectoration of blood), which may spread the disease by droplets from human-to-human.
In 2019's CDC: The 8 Zoonotic Diseases Of Most Concern In The United States, we looked at a joint CDC, USDA, DOI report on the top (n=56) zoonotic diseases of national concern for the United States.
While Zoonotic Influenzas (avian, swine, etc.) were at the top of the list, Plague ranked 4th, and novel coronaviruses (MERS, SARS, etc.) ranked 5th.
I also read, around the age of 11 – James Leasor’s The Plague and The Fire -which recounts two incredible years in London’s history (1665-1666), which began with the Great plague, and ended with the Fire of London.
A fascinating read (if you can find a copy) for both history and epidemic aficionados.
