UN health agency wants more details from Russia on suspected pneumonic
plague case
[October 08, 2026]
By JAMEY KEATEN
GENEVA (AP) — A top official with the World Health Organization said
Wednesday it doesn’t know how a lab worker in Siberia died, and she
urged Russia to provide more information about a case that prompted
global concerns about suspected pneumonic plague.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management,
said the U.N. health agency doesn’t know what the “causative agent” was
behind the woman’s Oct. 2 death, which unconfirmed reports in Russia
blamed on pneumonic plague — a less common but severe form of plague
that can spread from person to person.
In its tersely worded statements, Russia's public health watchdog,
Rospotrebnadzor, does not link the case to pneumonic plague, saying only
that the lab worker had contracted pneumonia of “unknown” origin and
that “extensive” testing found no evidence her illness was caused by any
of the pathogens she worked with at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research
Institute of Siberia and the Far East.
“We don’t understand how she was infected,” Van Kerkhove said. “We need
information in a timely way. We need regular information. We need
answers to the follow-up of the questions that we have asked.”
“We have posed these questions to our colleagues in the Russian
Federation. In fairness, they have responded. We’ve gone back with more
questions,” she said.
The comments suggested the U.N. health agency has more questions than
answers about the situation at the lab, which focuses on plague and was
founded about a century ago to study the disease in Siberia, where it
occurs naturally in wild animals.
Russia has released little information about the case
Russian authorities have kept a tight lid on information about the case,
which has been surrounded by secrecy.
While it has raised global concerns, Russian state TV and other national
state-controlled media have largely steered clear of the subject. Some
news outlets withdrew earlier reports about the case.
Rospotrebnadzor said Sunday the lab worker was diagnosed with “pneumonia
of unknown etiology,” meaning its origin was not known.
A state TV station in Irkutsk reported she died Oct. 2 in a hospital in
Shelekhov, a town just outside Irkutsk. Officials have quarantined that
hospital and were monitoring the worker's contacts.
Russia has said the pneumonia initially presented as a “typical” acute
respiratory viral infection, the WHO has said, acknowledging that
pneumonia is commonplace.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Russian authorities
had indicated that no case of plague had recently been reported in the
Irkutsk region, and that they had placed about 200 contacts in
quarantine.
Russia says preventive measures are underway
U.S. President Donald Trump said he would discuss the issue during a
call with Russian President Vladimir Putin because Wednesday is the
Kremlin leader's 74th birthday.
“They’re sharing it a little bit with our people. We expect them to
share it a lot with our people,” Trump said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier Wednesday that a
Putin-Trump call hasn’t been set yet but could be organized quickly.
Asked if the incident was a sign that plague might be developed as a
bioweapon, Trump said, “We don’t think so. We’re going to find out soon
enough, but we don’t think so.”
When asked if the situation was similar to dealing with China on
COVID-19 in his first term, Trump suggested Russia was staying
relatively quiet, just as China did before the virus turned into a
pandemic. “China didn’t say much and Russia is not saying much either,
but they do say they have it very much under control,” he said.
Dr. Erica Schwartz, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, said the threat to the U.S. “is extremely low.” She travel
from that area of Russia to the U.S. each year is limited — and mostly
comes through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Government agencies are working “to make sure that we know exactly if
anyone from that area comes into the United States,” Schwartz said
during a Wall Street Journal health forum Wednesday.
Russian health authorities reported a full range of preventive measures
had been carried out — including tracing the dead woman’s contacts,
medical monitoring and lab tests, the WHO said.
The Geneva-based organization cited media reports that a second employee
had pneumonia of undetermined cause.
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A woman with her child walks past the building of the Irkutsk
Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East in
Irkutsk, Russia, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (AP Photo)
 Health experts urge more Russian
openness
Peskov referred all questions to Rospotrebnadzor, which does not
mention suspected plague in its reports and has not responded to a
request for comment.
In its latest statement Tuesday, the agency said “the sanitary and
epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region, the cities of
Irkutsk and Shelekhov is calm.” Authorities were completing a
“complex of prophylactic measures and medical observation over
contacts,” it said, adding that so far they have found two cases of
COVID-19 and two cases of rhinovirus.
“No other infectious pathogens have been found among contacts,” it
said.
Judy Twigg, professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth
University, noted that while the measures taken by Russian health
authorities “have been swift and serious,” officials sought to play
down the situation and “any statements that strayed from that party
line ... were edited or deleted within hours.”
“What we are watching is less a failure to respond than a failure of
candor,” Twigg said in written comments.
Vasily Vlassov, professor at the department of healthcare
administration and economics at Russia’s Higher School of Economics,
said the measures taken appeared “sensible,” focusing on treating
the sick, isolating them and their contacts, looking for new cases
and carrying out disinfection.
He said it wasn't clear whether more transparency was possible if
those dealing with the situation didn’t have enough certainty, and
“maybe, they still don’t.” Deceiving the public, however, “always
turns out to be harmful,” he said.
Distrust of Russia’s official narrative is “natural” and “almost
inevitable,” Vlassov said.
In the Soviet era, dangerous outbreaks of infection had “a thick
veil of secrecy — people were told nothing.”
The lab worker who died was described as highly diligent
The news outlet Lyudi Baikala — or “People of Baikal” — identified
the dead lab worker as Darya Shipilova, 28, and said she first was
hospitalized with cold symptoms Sept. 29 and died three days later.
It quoted colleagues as saying she was a highly qualified and
diligent researcher. They also emphasized that security rules at the
facility are extremely strict.
The report quoted Shipilova's neighbors as saying disinfection
experts did several cleanups of her apartment, leaving a strong
antiseptic smell.
Shipilova’s mother, who worked as a doctor in the past, described
her daughter as hard-working and dedicated, according to independent
Russian news outlet Glubina, adding that she had not gotten official
documents describing the cause of death.
Twigg noted that Russia criminalized “false information” about
threats to public safety in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, “so
silence is the one safe move for everyone below the top.”
“Personalist regimes without electoral accountability tend to treat
bad news as a loyalty problem rather than focusing on the actual
problem to be addressed,” she said.
She warned that “the public’s understandable reaction to the lack of
information carries real dangers.”
“A government that is not believed when it says ‘there is no
outbreak’ will not be believed when it must actually say ‘there is
one; do the following.’ We saw this with COVID,” she said.
Pneumonic plague and the more well-known bubonic plague — also
called the Black Death — are caused by the same bacteria, said Simon
Clarke of the University of Reading in the U.K. Pneumonic plague
results from breathing in the bacteria, causing an infection in the
lungs.
The bacterium, called Yersinia pestis, has not been eliminated, but
it is not spread very easily and it is treatable with antibiotics.
__
Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, Collin Binkley in Washington,
and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed.
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