Five hospitals and a college in Russia have been placed in immediate lockdown amid fears of a pneumonic plague outbreak after the death of a laboratory worker, with Vladimir Putin accused of covering up the incident. Patients are reportedly unable to leave to visit relatives, who are only allowed to deliver personal belongings or food.
Lockdowns and hospital restrictions
The lockdowns cover City Clinical Hospitals Numbers 1, 3 and 10, as well as the Ivano-Matreninskaya Children’s Clinical Hospital. Pneumonic plague is the most virulent form of plague, spreading from person to person through airborne respiratory droplets rather than ticks and rats, as with bubonic plague.
The outbreak is linked to the death of a laboratory assistant, Daria Shipilova, at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute. Some reports claim the 28-year-old fell ill while on an expedition on the border between Russia and Mongolia, while others say she was infected at the Institute after ‘breaking a test tube containing a pathogen’.
Official response and criticism
Officially, the lab worker’s death has been classified as pneumonia of unknown origins, with no pathogens related to her work identified. A healthcare source told People of Baikal that doctors are ‘already openly talking about plague’, but the diagnosis is not stated in official documents sent to hospitals.
‘Selective quarantine is not used for pneumonic plague. Restrictions are introduced simultaneously for all medical institutions,’ the source noted. Quarantine has also been introduced in one city maternity hospital. The family of one woman in labour told People of Baikal that doctors said the reason was plague, and her husband was not allowed into the ward despite having documents permitting him to be at her bedside.
Wider alerts and measures
The city of Baykalsk posted an alert urging residents to avoid traveling to Shelekhov, only to delete the post less than two hours later. REN-TV also hastily deleted five plague posts from its Telegram channel. At the Irkutsk Aluminium Plant (IrkAZ) in Shelekhov, a mask mandate was introduced after the death of a local resident from plague, according to the plant’s director, Artem Fominykh. ‘God protects those who protect themselves,’ Fominykh wrote, urging plant employees to seek medical assistance immediately if they develop symptoms.
Governor Igor Kobzev said on October 2 that there was a ‘particularly dangerous infection’ but that the ‘situation is under strict control.’ His Telegram channel is currently publishing posts about creative competitions, autumn weekend walks, and even promoting a fish festival. The governor has not mentioned plague.
Head of the Republic of Buryatia, Alexey Tsydenov said: ‘According to Rospotrebnadzor and the government of the Republic of Buryatia, the woman who possibly died of plague in the Irkutsk region had not travelled to Buryatia. There are no plague outbreaks in the republic, including in the area bordering Mongolia. The source of the infection is circumstances unrelated to Buryatia. I ask media outlets to consider this information when reporting on this topic.’
Russian epidemiologist Mikhail Favorov, who now lives in America, criticised authorities for their response and for allowing ‘a lot of nonsense’ to circulate. ‘Someone working at the anti-plague institute in Irkutsk wears a protective anti-plague suit. If you break a test tube, the likelihood of infection is actually very low. The story about the test tube? It’s laughable. It’s not as if the plague just flies out of the test tube, after all. That’s not how it works. In short, it doesn’t matter to the general public. They’ll believe the “dropped test tube” story.’
