Latest (Saturday evening, October 10): The WHO identified the deceased as 28-year-old laboratory technician Darya Shipilova of the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute, Al Jazeera reported, but said it still does not know what caused her pneumonia and that no plague case has been registered. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked Russia on Wednesday to respond to media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause; Russia dismissed the reports as false information, and the United States has separately called on Moscow for transparency. The new details do not change the WHO’s core finding: no evidence of ongoing transmission, with all known contacts symptom-free.
The World Health Organization said Saturday it still has not identified what caused the pneumonia that killed a laboratory worker at an anti-plague research center near Irkutsk, Siberia, on October 2, adding that no case of plague has been registered. Tests of the worker and of those who had contact with her came back negative for the high-threat pathogens tested, her contacts remain symptom-free, and the WHO said it found no evidence of ongoing transmission tied to the event.
The death prompted authorities to quarantine about 200 people and triggered public health fears on social media. Russia’s state regulator says the worker was appropriately vaccinated, that no microorganisms linked to her work were found in her body, and that health checks on all contacts are complete. The WHO’s key uncertainty, it said, is the absence of a confirmed diagnosis in the deceased worker, though it noted the cause of individual pneumonia cases often cannot be determined.