Testing and monitoring underway in suspected Russia plague death

“A woman who worked at the laboratory in Irkutsk oblast has died, and the authorities are looking into whether pneumonic plague caused her death,” WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva.

He underscored that her workplace was “an institute that studies dangerous pathogens, including plague, in a part of Siberia where plague occurs naturally in wild animals.”

Highly contagious

Plague is caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis usually found in small mammals and their fleas.

Pneumonic plague occurs when the bacteria infect the lungs. WHO notes that this form of plague infection is especially contagious and “can trigger severe epidemics through person-to-person transmission via respiratory particles”.

According to WHO, pneumonic plague “can be fatal within 18 to 24 hours of disease onset if left untreated, but common antibiotics for enterobacteria can effectively cure the disease if they are delivered early”.

No official cause of death

No cause of death has been officially confirmed to date and laboratory testing is reportedly underway, Mr. Lindmeier said.

Sharing with reporters a message received from the Russian health authorities moments earlier on Tuesday, the WHO spokesperson said that “according to the test results, no pathogens of dangerous infectious diseases were detected among any of the contacts.”

The authorities’ message indicated that the illness “initially presented as a typical acute respiratory viral infection”.

Explaining the timeline of events, Mr. Lindmeier said that on 2 October “the internal monitoring system picked up the media reports of a suspected death from pneumonic plague in the Irkutsk oblast and started monitoring the situation.”

The next day, WHO contacted the Russian health authorities to get more information under the International Health Regulations “to verify the event, its circumstances, the laboratory tests underway and their results, the rationale for contact tracing and the health status of the contacts as well as any potential international public health implication”, Mr. Lindmeier said.

No sign of spread

All of the patients' contacts have reportedly been identified and are being monitored, he added, stressing that “none to date have shown symptoms of illness.”

Mr. Lindmeier stated that WHO’s initial risk assessment from the information available “estimates the risk to be moderate to low for Irkutsk, a low risk for the Russian Federation as a whole and very low for the WHO European region”.

He stressed that this assessment will be updated as more information comes in.

WHO is following the situation closely, working with headquarters to keep other countries informed and stands “ready to support the Russian authorities if they ask”.