Trump says he will speak with Putin about reported plague death in Russia

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he would speak 'very soon' with Russian President Vladimir Putin about a reported plague death in Russia, Die Welt and the South China Morning Post reported. Asked at the White House about US intelligence assessments, Trump said the United States was holding 'very intensive talks' and that more could probably be reported on Wednesday, according to Die Welt. On Monday, Trump said the US was ready to help Russia deal with the situation and described the disease as a severe illness, Die Welt reported.

The worker, a 27-year-old employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and Far East, died on 2 October after being admitted with severe pneumonia to a hospital in Shelekhov, near the regional capital, El País reported. Rospotrebnadzor, Russia's public health agency, attributes the case to a 'pneumonia of unknown etiology', meaning of unknown cause, and says it has not found microorganisms linked to her professional activity, according to El País. El País reported that authorities denied a claim, circulating on Telegram channels and in local media, that she died from an infection acquired at her workplace.

El País reported that the death triggered a public health emergency in the region and that authorities restricted hospital access, with about 200 contacts under surveillance. Local media put the number under surveillance at 197, a figure not confirmed by Russian health authorities, which have not released the results of their analyses, according to El País. The South China Morning Post reported that Russian authorities denied imposing anti-plague measures and played down reports of an incident at the institute in Siberia's Irkutsk region last week.

The World Health Organization classified the risk outside Russia as 'very low' on Tuesday and said it was in contact with Russian authorities after reports of the worker's death, Die Welt reported. Die Welt also reported that, according to US intelligence agencies, a plague case had occurred in Russia. The South China Morning Post reported that Washington pressed Moscow for transparency.

Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and remains active in animal reservoirs, especially small mammals and the fleas they carry, with around 2,000 cases a year in Africa, Asia and the Americas, El País reported. The most common form is bubonic plague, associated with swollen lymph nodes; pneumonic plague, which affects the lungs, is far less common and more serious, according to El País. Brendan Wren, professor of microbial pathogenesis at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told the Science Media Centre that Yersinia pestis is 'fairly transmissible, but not as much as SARS-CoV-2', the virus that causes Covid-19, El País reported.

Incubation is usually one to three days, and untreated pneumonic plague can be fatal quickly but responds to antibiotics if given early, provided there is no antimicrobial resistance, according to El País. Epidemiologist Malick Gibani of Imperial College London said, in comments distributed by the Science Media Centre, that identifying, testing and preemptively isolating the contacts of a laboratory worker who develops a compatible illness is a proportionate measure. Ian Jones, a specialist at the University of Reading, said that if this were a laboratory accident, the risk of it spreading much further is low, because the contacts have been identified and can receive treatment at any sign compatible with infection.