The biological laboratory that has drawn international attention after a suspected pneumonic plague death sits in the center of a densely populated city in Siberia, flanked by grocery stores and kindergartens.
The pneumonic plague—alongside its sibling, the bubonic plague—is best known as the pathogen behind the Black Death, which swept through Eurasia in the 14th century, killing between one-third and one-half of every community affected by it. Pneumonic plague was particularly devastating, with a nearly 100 percent fatality rate in those who caught it before the discovery of antibiotics. Symptoms of plague can include fever, shortness of breath, and bloody mucus.
Irkutsk, a Siberian city roughly 2,625 miles from Moscow and just north of the border with Mongolia, is more temperate than much of Siberia, warmed by Lake Baikal to the southeast. Teenagers talk as they walk along the city’s tree-lined sidewalks, families play in public parks, and tourists congregate at the city’s monuments and museums. Modern buildings stand alongside those dating back to the city’s founding in the 17th century, interspersed with holdovers from the Soviet era.
Tram lines run throughout the architecturally diverse “Siberian Petersburg,” sliced in two by the Angara River, and hosting a population of roughly 605,000 people—on par with American cities such as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Louisville, and Kentucky.
It’s also home to the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East, a biological laboratory dedicated to the study of plague bacteria, now under international scrutiny after an employee died from pneumonia of unknown origin.
That lab lies dead in the center of Irkutsk. Russian officials insist the situation is under control.
Here’s what to know.
Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute
The institute lies in Irkutsk’s larger eastern half, surrounded by a fence line that encompasses most of the facility’s perimeter.
The institute, established in 1934 to work on plague control, has 95 employees on its scientific staff, including 13 doctors, and a mission to protect against epidemics, including epidemics of plague.
Plague is a disease caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. It is typically spread through bites from infected rodent fleas, although pneumonic plague can spread from person to person.
The U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO) describes pneumonic plague as a less common but severe form of plague.
“Plague can be a very severe disease in people, with a case-fatality ratio of 30 percent to 60 percent for the bubonic type, and it is always fatal for the pneumonic and septicaemic kinds when left untreated,” the WHO states on its website, referring to other forms of the disease.
According to information from the National Institutes of Health, pneumonic plague has a transmission rate of about 1.3 to 1.44, meaning that each person with plague infects one other person on average. That low rate of transmission is in part driven by the fact that pneumonic plague requires sustained, close face-to-face contact.
What’s Around the Institute
A review of the area surrounding the Irkutsk Institute shows that it’s immediately surrounded by several high-traffic businesses, hospitals, municipal buildings, and schools.
Lying closest to the institute itself is the Slata Supermarket. On Google Earth, a dozen cars are visible in the store’s parking lot, which borders the fence surrounding the institute.
To its northeast, the lab is flanked by a hotel and a kindergarten housed in a relatively large gated facility.
To its northeast sits a municipal hospital. In the streets around that hospital, pop-up food stands litter the street, where people can be seen socializing, old ladies sit on benches, and people and families walk alone or in groups.
Along its western gate, the institute is bordered by a district prosecutor’s office, a police station, a florist, another hotel, and a hairdresser.
Plague Outbreak Speculation
Russian officials have sought to tamp down on what Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as “various rumors and speculation” of a plague outbreak in the region in a press conference Monday.
“One should be guided by the official statements of Rospotrebnadzor, not listening to various rumors, speculations, and so on,” Peskov said, referencing the top Russian health ministry. “There is Rospotrebnadzor where high professionals of the field work. Let’s listen to their official statements.”
“CDC is monitoring the situation closely with the State Department and our other interagency partners,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“The safety and security of U.S. citizens is our highest priority.”
Russian officials haven’t identified the female lab employee who died, and her cause of death hasn’t yet been confirmed. It’s also not clear when the worker died.
But Russian officials have denied that the employee’s death was related to the institute’s work.
On Monday, Igor Kobzev, the regional governor of the Irkutsk region, issued a statement on Telegram that testing has shown “no microorganisms related to her professional activities were found in the woman’s biopsy specimens.”
“The cause of her death was pneumonia of unknown etiology,” Kobzev said.
He emphasized that this employee was the only known case from the institute.
“Importantly, no new cases of Anti-Plague Institute employees seeking medical attention have been identified in the past few days,” he said.
About 200 People Quarantined
Russian health authorities said they took action to prevent further spread of the pathogen, according to an Oct. 4 report by Russian news agency Interfax.
That included finding “the widest possible circle of people who had been in contact with the patient,” the health agency said.
Shelekhovsky district Mayor Maxim Modin said on Oct. 2 that the hospital has been placed under quarantine and is no longer admitting or discharging patients, and its laboratory has been halted from carrying out routine tests. The hospital’s outpatient clinic kept operating as usual, he said.
Irkutsk Gov. Igor Kobzev said in a post on Telegram on the same day that all identified people who have been in contact with the affected person are under medical supervision, have shown no signs of illness, and tested negative for the disease.
The Irkutsk Aluminum Plant in Shelekhov is also mandating masks as a precaution, its director wrote in a post on Telegram over the weekend.
Testing on the patient showed no microorganisms linked to the person’s job, and no infectious diseases were reported among institute employees in the past 10 days, according to Rospotrebnadzor.
Testing among people who had been in contact showed two COVID-19 cases and two cases of rhinovirus.
Many Unknowns
Many questions remain unclear as the international community seeks clarity about the situation in Russia.
A U.S. State Department spokesman told The Epoch Times on Monday that the United States is aware of reports of “a fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague” in Irkutsk and is monitoring the situation closely.
“Many details have not been confirmed. We encourage Russian authorities to share accurate information quickly and openly,” the State Department spokesman said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed reporters about the issue in Maryland on Monday.
“There’s concern that [it] could have spread, at least internally; you’ve seen them do quarantine of this and that nature,” he said.
“There’s very limited travel between the U.S. and Russia, obviously. But like anything else, if something like that gets out, it can quickly spread. So we’re watching and monitoring it closely. I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and the cause to just keep an eye on it, and we’re doing that.”
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