A Broken Plague Test Tube and a Dead Lab Technician in Irkutsk: Moscow Says "Stable", Washington Wants Answers

Daria Shipilova was 28 and worked at the Plague Control Research Institute in Irkutsk, in south-eastern Siberia. On September 25, according to local media, she broke a test tube containing the pathogen that causes pneumonic plague. On September 29 she was admitted to hospital with symptoms of severe pneumonia. On the night of October 1 to 2 she died. The official cause: "pneumonia of unknown etiology".

Unknown etiology - at an institute whose only job is plague. That's the sentence that set the rumours alight, and it's hard to blame people for reading it twice.

Russian authorities say they found no evidence that her illness was caused by any of the pathogens she worked with and that the situation is under control. Rospotrebnadzor, the sanitary watchdog, said disinformation about a new plague case was circulating on social media and that the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region is "stable". At the same time, the hospital where she was treated has been quarantined, and around 200 people who were in contact with her are under strict medical observation.

Quarantining an entire hospital and putting two hundred people under observation are not measures for "nothing". If everything is stable, why does it look like a state of emergency?

Washington wants transparency, the Kremlin "has no information"

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on October 6 asked Russia for more information about the infection. "We call on Russia to be transparent and give the world more information, so that everyone can respond appropriately," Rubio said. An unnamed State Department official told CNN that US authorities had contacted the Russian government even before that, and The Washington Post reported on October 7 that the US is preparing an official diplomatic note to Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied that the Kremlin has no information about any such note.

The European Commission and EU member states have also scheduled talks on the suspicion that pneumonic plague has broken out in Siberia. Britain's Daily Mail, citing some Russian media, claims a second person suspected of being infected has also died - a claim nobody has officially confirmed. So Brussels isn't entirely convinced by the word "stable" either.

The Balkans remember Chernobyl

In April 1986 Moscow stayed silent about Chernobyl for days, while the radioactive cloud was already drifting over Europe, the Balkans included. That doesn't mean Irkutsk is a new Chernobyl - pneumonic plague today is treated with antibiotics if caught in time. But the pattern is familiar: first "nothing's happening", then "under control", and the truth arrives last.

A young scientist is dead, 200 people are waiting for results, and the diplomats are the loudest voices. Who will answer for it if the "unknown etiology" turns out to be very well known?