Several hospitals in Siberia have been placed under quarantine after the death of a laboratory worker who was reportedly exposed to the highly contagious pneumonic plague.
Local media said Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old lab assistant, died in the early hours of 2 October - days after accidentally breaking a test tube containing the pathogen.
A number of hospitals were closed immediately and placed under a quarantine expected to last three weeks, while 200 people have been placed under strict medical observation, according to the independent Russian outlet Baikal People.
Russian authorities denied a link between the death and a lab leak despite multiple media reports.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Washington was monitoring the case closely, aware that "it could spread quickly" despite the quarantine and other public health protocols.
What happened at the Russian lab?
There have been conflicting reports over how Shipilova fell ill.
Baikal People said Shipilova was working with live biological material at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute on 25 September when she accidentally smashed a test tube containing the dangerous bacteria Yersinia pestis.
After two days, her condition is said to have deteriorated and she was rushed to the hospital. Doctors initially suspected she had coronavirus due to her symptoms and admitted her to a specialised Covid unit at the district hospital in Shelekhov.
She was put on a ventilator before she died on 2 October.
The response of authorities has been mixed, causing further confusion. Officials have said being that Shipilova died of “pneumonia of an unknown origin”.
Doctors in Irkutsk are “openly talking about plague”, according to Baikal People.
Euronews reports that Alexey Tsydenov, the governor of the neighbouring Buryatia region, said Shipilova’s death was linked to a plague infection but his statement was later changed to include the word “maybe”.
Baikalsk authorities also advised residents not to travel to Shelekhov on Saturday “due to unofficial information about a confirmed case of plague in a person in the city of Shelekhov”. The post was deleted less than two hours later.
Masks were also made compulsory as a preventive measure at the aluminium plant in Shelekhov on Saturday. Rospotrebnadzor, the national public health agency of the Russian Federation, has insisted that the situation in the region is “stable”.
What do we know about the lab?
According to its website, the institution was set up in 1934 by an order of the USSR with the intention of functioning as a “scientific operative body for plague control”. It is a state-run institution, although much of its work is tightly controlled.
Over the years it has expanded its work to other diseases including cholera, brucellosis, tularemia, anthrax, and arbovirus infections.
However, it also serves a possible national security function monitoring for data on “the amount of incidents suspicious to biological terrorism” in Siberia and the Far East since 2001.
The structure of the Institute is divided into three departments including an anti-epidemic division covering infections including anthrax and tularemia and plague microbiology and an experimental division with both a biochemical and pathophysiological subdivision.
There is also a research and production department and general purpose division, which covers information analytics including the purposes of “selection and summarising of national and foreign literature data on the directions of the Institute’s researches”, a lab for testing animals and lab for “experimental animals”.
Professional and advanced training is also offered.
According to analysis by Anthony Rimmington, a former Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham University, writing in February 2025, much of Russia’s anti-plague work remains closed to the international community.
How has the world responded?
According to a statement by the US state department shared with Radio Free Liberty on Sunday, the US is “aware of reports of a fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia”.
“We are monitoring the situation closely with the CDC and our other interagency partners,” it said.
It urged Russian authorities to “share accurate information quickly and openly.”
“Plague infections occur regularly with a few hundred cases a year globally,” Prof Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia told The Independent.
“There are different forms of the disease, bubonic and septicaemic are spread by flea bites from close contact with infected animals.
“Pneumonic plague is spread person to person through respiratory droplets. Laboratory acquired infections are not unknown and are usually acquired through inhalation hence pneumonic plague in lab worker, if that is what it is.”
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