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

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that a woman who worked at a laboratory in the Irkutsk region of Siberia has died, and that authorities are looking into whether pneumonic plague caused her death. WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva that her workplace was "an institute that studies dangerous pathogens, including plague, in a part of Siberia where plague occurs naturally in wild animals." He said WHO's internal monitoring system picked up media reports of a suspected death on 2 October, and that WHO contacted Russian health authorities the next day under the International Health Regulations to verify the event, the laboratory tests underway and any potential international public health implications.

Russian officials say the cause of death is not confirmed. Irkutsk regional governor Igor Kobzev said on Monday that an inspection by Rospotrebnadzor, Russia's health and consumer protection surveillance organisation, found the woman died of pneumonia and that the cause was "undetermined". He said "no microorganisms linked to the young woman's professional work were found in her biological samples", and that no other staff at the institute had sought medical attention since her death. Rospotrebnadzor said on Telegram that a document circulating online, which claimed special measures had been put in place, did not originate from official sources and was untrue.

WHO shared a message from the Russian health authorities saying that, according to test results, "no pathogens of dangerous infectious diseases were detected among any of the contacts", and that the illness "initially presented as a typical acute respiratory viral infection". Lindmeier said all of the woman's contacts had been identified and were being monitored, and none had shown symptoms to date. He said WHO's initial risk assessment estimates the risk as moderate to low for Irkutsk, low for the Russian Federation as a whole, and very low for the WHO European region. WHO said an update received from Russia on Tuesday stressed that "no case of this dangerous disease has been recorded in the city of Irkutsk".

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would speak "very soon" with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the reported death. "I have a call scheduled, yes," Trump told reporters at the White House. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking during a trip to Iceland, said: "We encourage Russia to be transparent and share more information with the world so that all of us could react accordingly and appropriately." The Wall Street Journal reported that the State Department sent Russia a demarche — a confidential diplomatic communication — warning that failure to disclose details runs counter to its international health obligations.

Russian news outlet People of Baikal reported on Friday, 2 October, that the woman who died was 28-year-old Darya Shipilova and that she may have contracted pneumonic plague from a broken test tube. The outlet also reported that up to 200 people with whom she may have had contact were under quarantine. Russian officials say postmortem tests did not detect the disease.

Pneumonic plague is a serious lung infection and is often described as the most virulent form of the disease, according to the BBC. The other two types are bubonic, which affects the lymph nodes, and septicaemic, which affects the blood. WHO says pneumonic plague can be fatal within 18 to 24 hours of disease onset if left untreated, but common antibiotics can effectively cure it if delivered early. According to the BBC, the global number of infections of all three types varies each year but is probably between 1,000 and 3,000 cases, most of them bubonic.