The death of a worker at a Russian plague research centre in Siberia has raised concerns that the deadly disease could spread.
The World Health Organisation and the United States have both asked Russia for more information on the circumstances surrounding the incident. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has urged Russia to release more information. “I think it’s incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world,” Rubio told reporters. “We’re watching it very closely, hour by hour.”
The incident has sparked a flurry of speculation about the circumstances in which the 28-year-old woman died. Russian officials have said they are still investigating the cause of the death but those who came into contact with the victim all tested negative to pneumonic plague.
Reports first emerged on Friday of almost 200 people being placed under observation in Siberia’s Irkutsk region following the death.
The lab worker, named in Russian media as Darya Shipilova, had reportedly fallen ill a couple of days earlier.
Unconfirmed reports suggested that she had become ill after breaking a test tube containing the pathogen or following a field trip to a region where plague occurs naturally among wild rodents.
But Russian officials have played down those reports. The country’s health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said the woman had died of “pneumonia of an undetermined etiology”.
Jane Hill presents BBC News at Ten reporting by Steve Rosenberg.
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