A technician at Russia's anti-plague institute in Siberia died last week, and the people who run the institute have already ruled on what happened inside it. No breach, they say.
She worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, the state's plague lab for Siberia and the Far East. She went into hospital on Tuesday, September 29, in Shelekhov, a town outside Irkutsk, with severe pneumonia. Doctors put her on a ventilator. She died on Thursday, Russian reports say; the World Health Organization puts her death a day later, on October 2. Local media named her as Darya Shipilova, 28.
Alexei Tsydenov, who runs the neighbouring republic of Buryatia, wrote on Telegram that she died of plague. Then he changed it to "died, maybe of the plague." On Sunday Russia's health watchdog gave the official diagnosis, "pneumonia of unknown aetiology," and said its tests found "no microorganisms associated with her professional activities." The same authorities put nearly 200 people who crossed her path under medical observation, more than 100 of them in hospital wards, and quarantined the Shelekhov district hospital. That is a lot of beds for a pneumonia of unknown cause.
Marco Rubio called it "cause for focus," not alarm. A State Department official went further: "We encourage Russian authorities to share accurate information quickly and openly."
So which is it, the governor's plague or the watchdog's pneumonia, and who is going to tell us?
