Russian health officials say there is no risk of a plague outbreak in Siberia after a worker at a plague research institute died from unexplained pneumonia. The case remains confined to Russia, with no known impact on Thailand.
Russia’s public health agency, Rospotrebnadzor, said today, October 8, that it had begun easing precautionary measures introduced after the death because assessments found no risk of the disease spreading.
The agency said it had also provided updated information to the World Health Organization (WHO).
No plague infections have been detected among people who had close contact with the worker. Around 90% of those placed in quarantine have since been released after nearly 5,000 laboratory tests found no dangerous pathogens.
Rospotrebnadzor said the worker had been vaccinated and had immunity against serious infections that could be encountered during research work.
Russian officials have not, however, established what caused the pneumonia that led to her death or identified the illness responsible.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organisation wanted further information from Russia to understand what happened, including the types of tests carried out and which pathogens had been examined.
WHO also wants to know the cause of death if plague has been ruled out and has offered assistance to Russian officials.
The organisation has separately repeated a request for Russia to investigate reports of a second person suffering from pneumonia of unknown origin.
Some Western media outlets reported that a second person in Siberia had died from plague, citing unnamed Russian media. However, the claim remains unverified, with no matching report in Russian media and no evidence confirming a second plague death.
Some bloggers have also claimed that additional cases were detected, but those claims remain unsupported.
The Kremlin said Russia had provided WHO with information on the situation in line with established procedures.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov urged caution over reports surrounding the case, saying a large amount of information was circulating and that much of the media coverage was false. He advised relying primarily on information from public health agencies.
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