The World Health Organization has acknowledged that it still cannot say what caused the fatal pneumonia of a lab technician at a Russian plague research centre. It also confirmed that no plague infection has been recorded in connection with the case.
In a statement on Saturday, the UN health agency said Russian regulators had told it that tests on the woman and on people who had been in contact with her came back negative for the dangerous pathogens screened for. Her contacts have shown no symptoms, and no other linked cases of severe pneumonia have surfaced, the WHO added.
Test results and the WHO’s remaining uncertainty
The WHO said it had seen no evidence of continuing spread tied to the event. It described the lack of a confirmed diagnosis in the dead worker as a key unresolved gap.
Russian authorities said the woman had been properly vaccinated and that no microorganisms linked to her work were found in her body. Post-mortem tests, they said, did not detect plague. Rospotrebnadzor, the country’s health watchdog, said she had been diagnosed with “pneumonia of unknown aetiology.”
Quarantine, follow-up checks and calls for transparency
The woman fell ill and died on October 2, in circumstances that have not been disclosed. Authorities placed about 200 people in quarantine, and the case fuelled public health anxiety on social media.
A local official said on October 6 that 60 percent of those quarantined had already been released. On Thursday, Russia said it had finished health checks on all of her contacts and passed all relevant information to the WHO.
Earlier, on Wednesday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked Russia to respond to media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause. Russia dismissed those reports as untrue, and the United States has also urged Moscow to be transparent.
Identity of the worker and early plague suspicions
Russian media named the dead woman as Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old lab technician at the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, in Irkutsk region. Pneumonic plague, a lung infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is usually carried by small mammals and their fleas, was suspected early on.
The governor of neighbouring Buryatia said the woman may have died of plague. Health officials have been more watchful for deadly pneumonia of unknown cause since the COVID-19 pandemic, although the cause of individual cases often cannot be determined.
