Plague suspected in Russia: the director of the Pasteur Institute calls for “calm” and vigilance

While a laboratory technician died at the beginning of October potentially from pneumonic plague in the Irkoustk region, in Siberia, the director of the Pasteur Institute Yasmine Belkaïd, interviewed this Friday, October 9 at the microphone of France Inter, called on the French to remain “calm, absolutely vigilant, but calm”. Before emphasizing that “today […] we are not going to speculate on what is happening” because we lack information on “the facts”.

The immunology researcher also recalled that if the plague has not today been eliminated in the world (including cases in Madagascar), in France, the National Plague Reference Center (CNR) of the Pasteur Institute “knows this disease very well” and is currently developing a vaccine which is “in clinical trials”. “If the disease is caught early, it can be treated with antibiotics,” added Yasmine Belkaïd.

No infectious pathology detected

Russia attributed the death to “pneumonia”, but the United States, the European Union and the World Health Organization (WHO) demanded more transparency from Moscow. The Russian authorities affirmed Thursday that “no infectious pathology” had been detected following medical surveillance of all people who had been in contact with a laboratory worker working on the plague in Siberia, who died of “pneumonia”.

“Medical surveillance of all people who were in contact with the patient has been completed. No health problem linked to an infectious pathology has been detected,” announced Max Igor Kobzev, the governor of the Irkutsk region where the laboratory assistant was employed, on the messaging service. According to him, nearly 5,000 laboratory analyzes were carried out and “did not reveal the presence of any dangerous pathogenic microorganisms”.