The death of Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician at the Institute for Anti-Pest Research of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk, led to the quarantine of a hospital and to medical surveillance of people who had contact with her.
The Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s sanitary surveillance agency, ruled on Sunday (4) that the cause was not plague, a version that circulated in the Russian press and was even repeated by a governor.
The agency recorded the diagnosis as “pneumonia of unknown etiology.” The origin of the infection that killed the employee, however, has not yet been identified.
What happened
Shipilova was admitted on Tuesday (29) to the Shelekhov District Hospital, a city neighboring Irkutsk, with pneumonia symptoms, and died on Friday (2).
On Thursday night (the 1st), reports that the hospital’s inpatient ward had been closed began to circulate on social media. Soon after, the district mayor Maksim Modin confirmed the quarantine, with suspensions of admissions and discharges in several sectors. The outpatient clinic continued operating.
Also on Friday, the governor of Irkutsk, Igor Kobzev, convened the regional sanitary and anti-epidemic commission with the head of Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, who traveled to the meeting. Kobzev spoke of a suspicion of an “especially dangerous infection,” without naming the disease, and said that the identified contacts were under medical observation, with no signs of illness and with negative tests.
Where the plague hypothesis came from
The suspicion originated from the Russian press. The Lyudi Baikala site, which identified the victim, reported that she had broken a test tube containing the pneumonic plague agent. The Mash channel on Telegram and REN TV also attributed the death to the disease.
Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. In the pneumonic form, it affects the lungs and can pass from person to person through respiratory droplets.
The governor of neighboring Buryatia, Alexey Tsydenov, was a prominent figure who publicly linked the death to plague. He wrote that, according to data from Rospotrebnadzor and the regional government, “the woman who died of plague in the Irkutsk region did not visit Buryatia.” Later, he updated the post to say that she “may have died of plague.”
What was investigated
According to Rospotrebnadzor, a biosafety control commission examined the work with pathogens at the institute, and a group of experts sent by Popova confirmed the conclusions. According to the agency, “no emergency situations in the handling of pathogenic microorganisms” were identified, which contradicts the broken test tube version.
The agency also stated that analyses did not detect microorganisms linked to Shipilova’s professional activity, describing the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region, the regional capital, and in Shelekhov as stable.
What remains to be known
The official note does not specify which agent caused the pneumonia nor how Shipilova became ill. The quarantine at the Shelekhov hospital remained in effect after the statement, according to Russian outlets.
There is also no official information on how many people remain under observation. Izvestia newspaper and the Lyudi Baikala site spoke of about 200 identified contacts.
The last plague case in humans recorded in Russia occurred in 2016, when a 10-year-old boy fell ill in the Altai Republic.
