The State Department sent a demarche to Moscow requesting additional information regarding a purported plague outbreak in the Siberian oblast of Irkutsk.
Last week, 28-year-old Russian lab technician Daria Shipilova died two days after being hospitalized, with what has now been identified by Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s public health and consumer protection agency, as “pneumonia of unknown etiology.” She worked in Russia’s Anti-Plague Institute, leading to initial fears that her death was connected to a lab leak. Over 200 of her close contacts were quarantined, but they have nearly all since been released after daily tests found no others were infected.
Despite this, skepticism has abounded across the world, fearing another COVID-19-like pandemic. On Wednesday, the State Department confirmed it was pursuing further information from the Russian government.
“We have officially requested additional information from the Russian government. We are also in official communication with other countries around the world to share information,” a State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner in a statement.
A U.S. official told ABC News that the demarche primarily reminded Moscow of its requirements to comply with international health regulations.
Russia’s position on the health scare has remained largely unchanged since Monday, with local officials calling the situation “stable” and maintaining Shipilova’s death wasn’t due to the plague and was unrelated to her work. Nevertheless, the U.S. government isn’t the only foreign body demanding more answers from Moscow.
The most notable call came from World Health Organization head Tedros Ghebreyesus, who asked for clarification on “media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause.” Rospotrebnadzor said its daily testing found only two cases of COVID-19 and two cases of rhinovirus.
No major Russian outlets have reported on a second pneumonia case. A handful of Western and Ukrainian outlets went so far as to report a second death, citing local media, though they didn’t clarify which outlets. No local media reports claiming a second infection or death were readily available, though the Western and Ukrainian reports may have stemmed from confusion over initial Russian media reports.
The first Russian media reports about Shipilova’s death used the masculine form of “patient,” as her gender wasn’t yet known. Some outlets even outright declared the patient a man. The dates of the patient referred to in masculine terms and Shipilova — hospitalized on Sept. 29 and dead on Oct. 1 — match up, indicating they’re likely referring to the same person but were confused by outside outlets.
Ghebreyesus relayed what Russian officials told the WHO, including that it “reported that no high-threat pathogens had been detected among the contacts and that medical observation of all identified contacts had been completed.”
Despite the official calm over the scare, neighboring countries, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, have increased border controls out of an abundance of caution.
President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have both downplayed the concerns around the health scare. On Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. and Russia were in “very deep discussions” on the matter, and that he’d be “able to report about it probably tomorrow.” He said he’d call Russian President Vladimir Putin about the matter “very soon,” before expressing broader concerns about modern diseases.
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“That’s a disease we used to be able to control, but somehow those microbes got stronger and smarter than like an army,” he said of the pneumonic plague, adding that “we’ll help anybody that has that kind of a problem.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday that there was “no indication of a broader threat,” but that it was monitoring the situation in Russia.