Donald Trump has said he has a call scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a possible case of plague at a Siberian research institute. The US President told reporters at the White House that he would be talking to Mr Putin about the case “very soon”.
Death of institute employee under investigation
Health authorities are investigating after the death of an employee at an anti-plague institute, which authorities attributed to pneumonia with an unknown cause. Russian authorities have placed people in quarantine after plague research institute employee Daria Shipilova, 28, contracted pneumonia from an “unknown” cause and died.
Officials have said they found no evidence her illness was caused by any of the pathogens she worked with, but media reports suggest she may have died of pneumonic plague. The woman, who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia, died after she accidentally broke a test tube holding live plague bacteria while she was collecting samples, according to the Kyiv Independent.
US in ‘very deep discussions’
Asked what the US intelligence community was saying about the case, Mr Trump said the US is in “very deep discussions” on the topic. “We’ll be able to report about it, probably tomorrow,” Mr Trump said.
