Russian authorities told the World Health Organization (WHO) that "no case of plague has been recorded in Irkutsk," the agency said Tuesday, casting doubt about reports that anti-plague researcher Daria Shipilova died from suspected pneumonic plague. The WHO statement comes as biosecurity experts question whether Russia's reported response to the incident was consistent with a routine plague investigation. While there is no evidence that a biological weapon was involved, some experts say the scale of the reported response raises questions about whether officials were investigating a different infectious agent that has not been publicly identified.
The case drew international attention after media reports on October 2 said a woman working at a research laboratory in Irkutsk died of suspected pneumonic plague and that nearly 200 contacts were under medical observation and being tested. "The Soviet Union had an offensive biological weapons program at the scale that went back decades and decades, and some of those anti-plague institutes were part of that program," Dr. Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Newsweek.
"Just because there's plague on the door doesn't mean that's the only thing they work on. They work on many different biological agents there." According to the WHO, the agency requested information from Russian authorities on October 3 under the International Health Regulations, a framework governing the reporting of potential public health emergencies. The WHO said it has requested additional information regarding which pneumonia-causing pathogen led to the woman's death and remains ready to assist Russian authorities if needed.
The agency's statement has shifted attention away from plague itself and toward the unanswered question of what caused the illness, as well as why Russian authorities reportedly took extensive containment measures. Adalja said that several aspects of the reported response appeared inconsistent with what would normally be expected for a plague case. "Today, Russia notified the WHO that it was not plague," Adalja said.
"The way they were reacting to the cases in terms of the contacts, the hospital, the hazmat suits, the head of their equivalent of the CDC flying there, was incongruent with the plague response." Adalja said modern plague cases are generally treatable and that researchers working in facilities that handle plague would typically be subject to established safety protocols. "Plague might be a lot of clickbait. People get really excited about it, but it's a treatable disease of the 21st century," he said.
"Even if it were a drug-resistant version, it seemed to be a very major response to it." He noted that someone exposed to plague in a research setting would ordinarily have access to post-exposure prophylaxis and highly effective antibiotics that often prevent severe illness. "We know that Russia has used novel nerve agents in England," Adalja said. "And [Russian President] Vladimir Putin has talked about using genetic weapons or weapons of different characteristics.
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