A 28-year-old lab technician died at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia, Russia, last week. CIDRAP has the news.
Russian government officials have not confirmed that the woman died from pneumonic plague; however, several media reports suggest she died after an accident involving a broken vial containing a live sample of plague. 200 people are now rumored to be under quarantine in Siberia.
The official Russian infectious disease agency said that “no micro-organisms associated with the employee’s professional duties were detected in samples taken from the patient.” Other media in Russia and Europe has begun to stoke concerns over a lab leak incident or fears that the plague sample came from a bioterrorism unit.
Regardless of the accident’s provenance, pneumonic plague is possible to contain, and any close contacts would be given prophylactic antibiotics, according to Michael Osterholm, CIDRAP’s director. According to him, people likely wouldn’t jump to bioterrorism concerns if the incident occurred in a friendly nation. Plus, plague infections occur every year around the world.
Pneumonic plague is the deadliest of the three main plague types. It is also extremely contagious and transmits from person to person via respiratory droplets. Its incubation period is only around 24 hours. From 2019 to 2025, there were 3,800 suspected plague cases in 10 countries, and most of the cases were bubonic, not pneumonic. Concern levels around this death on a worldwide level remain very low.
