The U.S. State Department is pressing Moscow to be transparent about a suspected pneumonic plague outbreak that has killed a young researcher in Siberia.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 48, labeled the death of Daria Shipilova, 28, “cause for focus” but not alarm as he left Washington on Monday for a trip to Europe. The Russian scientist worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and reportedly died from pneumonia of unknown origin, prompting officials to quarantine the hospital where she was treated.
“We know what we know, obviously, about whatever the Russians have provided, which is, it seems that there was a worker at the lab that was infected, and this concern that could have spread, at least internally,” Rubio told reporters. “You’ve seen them do quarantines. There’s very limited travel between the US and Russia, obviously. But like anything else, something like that gets out, it could certainly spread.”
The diplomat continued: “So we’re watching and monitoring it closely. I don’t think it’s cause for alarm but it is cause for focus and a cause just to keep an eye on it.”
A State Department spokesman issued a written statement Monday urging openness from Russian authorities. “Many details have not been confirmed. We encourage Russian authorities to share accurate information quickly and openly,” the spokesman said. The same statement noted that Washington is “aware of reports of a fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia” and is “monitoring the situation closely with the CDC and our other interagency partners.”
Pneumonic plague spreads from person to person through the air and is nearly always fatal without rapid antibiotic treatment. The disease is rare globally, with very few cases recorded annually, and those typically occur in Africa where outbreaks usually burn out without wide transmission.
The current alarm carries particular weight given recent pandemic history. Global concern about the Russian case follows the outbreak of COVID-19, which many believe leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China before killing more than 1.2 million Americans and dramatically impacting everyday life.
One of the worst documented pneumonic plague outbreaks struck between October 1910 and April 1911 in Manchuria, killing approximately 60,000 people. That epidemic was eventually suppressed through widespread use of face masks and was believed to have been sparked by hunters handling tarbagan marmots.