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Eurasia / public health · Public record

Russia Irkutsk plague: lab worker dies; officials deny cases

Lenin Square in Shelekhov, Irkutsk Oblast, under a pale sky in August 2013, with mid-rise apartment blocks and a paved plaza.
Archival: Lenin Square in Shelekhov, Irkutsk Oblast, August 2013. The Shelekhov district hospital inpatient ward was closed for quarantine after a technician from the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute died there last week. The photograph predates the episode and does not show the hospital, the institute or the people in this story. Photograph: Artëm Poloz (Arthur Jamson) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped.

Update, 7 October 2026: The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that it did not know what caused the technician's death. "We don't understand how she was infected," Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's director of epidemic and pandemic management, said, the Associated Press reported. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency had asked Russia for more information on the cause of the severe pneumonia, the pathogen that prompted the public health measures, and media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause. Russian officials have not confirmed a second case. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that most of what the media were reporting about the situation was false. Rospotrebnadzor said on Wednesday that medical observation had ended for more than 90 percent of contacts, that almost 5,000 laboratory tests had found no dangerous pathogens, and that checks at the institute had found no accidents involving pathogenic microorganisms. It again did not name a cause of death. The United States delivered a formal diplomatic complaint, known as a démarche, to Russia over its response to the death, ABC News reported. "We have officially requested additional information from the Russian government," a State Department spokesperson said. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that a call with Vladimir Putin had been scheduled and would happen "very soon"; Peskov said on Wednesday that the call had not yet been set but could be arranged quickly. A US Embassy in Moscow health alert on Tuesday did not change US travel guidance: the State Department's Level 4 "Do Not Travel" advisory for Russia remains in place.

A laboratory technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East died last week of pneumonia whose cause Russian health officials have not named. Russian authorities told the World Health Organization that no plague case had been recorded in Irkutsk. The United States urged Moscow to share more information.

Russian media identified the dead woman as Darya Shipilova, 28. National and regional officials have not confirmed that name or that plague caused her death. Rospotrebnadzor, Russia's consumer and health watchdog, said she died of "pneumonia of unknown etiology" and that expanded tests found no microorganisms linked to her work. It also said it found no accident involving pathogenic microorganisms at the institute.

What Russian authorities say

What WHO and the United States say

What we don't know (as of 20:55 ET on 6 October)

Sources

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