Death of a laboratory worker in Siberia: Authorities deny suspicion of plague

In Siberia, numerous people have been quarantined after the death of a laboratory employee at an institute to combat plague diseases. All contacts of the 28-year-old are under medical observation, Russian authorities said. No further cases were identified among the institute's staff. The woman died last Friday in a hospital in the town of Shelekhov near Irkutsk.

According to local reports, the institute's employees were in quarantine at their workplace. The online medium Lyudi Baykala also reported that two general hospitals and a children's clinic in Irkutsk had been quarantined.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities rejected the suspicion that the laboratory technician could have died of plague. The cause of death was "pneumonia of unknown origin," said the Russian disease control agency Rospotrebnadzor, according to the Interfax news agency.

No microorganisms “related to her professional activity” were detected in the patient’s samples. The hygienic-epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region and in the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov is stable, Rospotrebnadzor said. The head of the authority, Anna Popowa, traveled to the region at the weekend for a crisis meeting about the case.

There had previously been unconfirmed reports that the woman may have been infected with pneumonic plague when she accidentally dropped a test tube. Rospotrebnadzor rejected this - there had been no laboratory accident at the research institute in Irkutsk. The anti-government news portal Meduza reported that warnings against traveling to the city of Shelekhov were initially widespread and later deleted.