U.S. monitors suspected plague case after Siberian lab worker’s death

The Trump administration is monitoring reports of a suspected pneumonic plague case in Russia’s Irkutsk region after the death of a laboratory worker, U.S. officials told Axios and NewsNation. The State Department said it was following the situation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The worker, identified by local media as Darya Shipilova, was employed at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East. Reports citing unnamed sources suggested she may have been exposed when a test tube broke, although other accounts proposed that she became infected during travel to neighboring Buryatia. Neither explanation has been officially confirmed.

Russian authorities said post-mortem testing found no evidence that her death was connected to plague or other microorganisms handled in her work. Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev said an expert commission determined that she died from pneumonia of undetermined cause and that no other institute employees had sought medical care since her death. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov urged the public to rely on official health agency statements rather than speculation.

Authorities placed dozens of people under medical observation and introduced quarantine precautions while investigating. Kobzev said the region’s sanitary and epidemiological situation was stable and under official control.