The plague that Moscow refuses to name

On 3 October, at 8.28 am, the local council of Baikalsk, a town of around 13,000 inhabitants in Eastern Siberia, published a notice: there had been a fatal case of the plague. A screenshot, saved by someone who saw it in time, records the exact time. Less than two hours later, the message had disappeared. No correction, no explanation – everything had been deleted.

Daria Shipilova died aged 28 during the night of 2–3 October in Shelekhov: she was a laboratory technician at the Siberian and Far Eastern Research Institute for Plague Control.

Very little is certain. Shipilova fell ill with extremely severe pneumonia and was only admitted to hospital on 29 September. And that in itself is odd: a laboratory technician who works in close contact with sensitive material only ends up in hospital when her condition has already become extremely serious. The health response involved two hundred contacts being isolated and hospitals being placed under quarantine. On 2 October, Anna Popova, head of the federal health authority, travelled to Irkutsk for an extraordinary meeting. An operational plan was approved, but Governor Igor Kobzev did not specify the type of infection. On 4 October, two days later, Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian equivalent of the National Institute of Public Health, explained that it was a case of pneumonia of unknown cause.

The plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which lives in rodents and their fleas, and takes three forms in humans. Bubonic and septicaemic plague are not normally transmitted from person to person. Pneumonic plague, however, is: it colonises the lungs, causes acute pneumonia and spreads through the air; the incubation period is a matter of a few hours or a few days and, if not treated in time, it is almost always fatal. For this reason, when a case is suspected, people are isolated, contacts are traced and areas are cordoned off.

The version of events that sparked the controversy comes from Lyudi Baikala, an independent Siberian newspaper. On 25 September, Shipilova allegedly broke a test tube containing Yersinia pestis in the laboratory. Four days later, she was in hospital. The incubation period for the pneumonic form would suggest the first symptoms appeared between the 26th and the 28th, and she was admitted to hospital on the 29th.

In the early days, other versions of the story were circulating. A Telegram channel reported that the woman had just returned from a mission to Buryatia, where there was allegedly a natural outbreak of the plague – a claim denied by the Buryat leader Aleksey Tsydenov. Another Telegram channel added that the woman had been working with infected animals in Transbaikalia.

On 1 October, the hospital in Shelekhov, where the woman died, suspended admissions and discharges in some of its wards. The same occurred in certain hospitals, in a paediatric ward and in a maternity ward. At an aluminium production plant in Shelekhov, the director, Artem Fominykh, made face masks compulsory as a ‘preventative measure’, writing to staff that ‘God protects those who protect themselves’ and advising them to seek medical attention at the first sign of symptoms.

Something doesn’t add up with the figures. On 2 October, the Russian daily Izvestia reported that 197 people had been identified as having been in contact with the deceased researcher and that 189 had been admitted to hospital for observation. On 5 October, Lyudi Baikala reported that over sixty employees of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute had been isolated in the building since 2 October, forced to sleep on chairs and on the floor.

None of those being monitored are showing symptoms and, according to some media reports, only one case of Covid and one rhinovirus infection have emerged amongst the contacts.

Moscow’s response is dated 4 October. Diagnosis: pneumonia of unknown aetiology, meaning the cause has not yet been identified. The Kazakh Ministry of Health reports that Rospotrebnadzor added, on 4 October, that no cases of plague had been identified. Agency reports mention microorganisms linked to occupational activity, but it is not clear from the text whether the cause was sought but not found, or found but not disclosed. Between 2 and 4 October, the description shifted from a ‘particularly dangerous disease’ to pneumonia of unknown cause.

The case has reached Washington: the White House is monitoring the situation and “assessing its options”. Kazakhstan has stepped up border controls, but considers the risk to be low and urges the public to trust only official sources.

To put this matter to rest, we need the actual microbiological results and, if possible, independent confirmation. Until then, we are talking about a plague that does not exist, ruled out with a haste that has not been explained.