CDC to Monitor Siberia Travelers Following Death at Russian Plague Institute

U.S. health authorities are preparing to identify and assess travelers arriving from a region of Siberia where an employee of a Russian plague research institute died from severe pneumonia of unknown origin, even as officials stress that the risk to the United States remains “extremely low.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Erica Schwartz said Oct. 7 that the agency is coordinating with other departments as officials seek more information about the employee’s death.

“We are working with Department of Homeland Security, working [with] Department of State, Department of War, and other agencies within the government to make sure that we know exactly if anyone from that area comes into the United States,” Schwartz said at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Health event in Washington.

RELATED: Death at Russian Plague Lab Triggers Quarantines and International Scrutiny

The CDC has personnel at airports through which travelers from the region enter the country and has measures in place to identify and assess them. The Department of Health and Human Services said roughly 200 people from the Siberian region travel to the United States annually. Direct flights between Russia and the United States have been suspended since 2022.

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“We are very confident that the threat to the United States is extremely low,” Schwartz reiterated.

Worker dies from unexplained pneumonia

The concern centers on Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia who died Oct. 2 after developing severe pneumonia.

Early Russian media reports suggested she may have contracted pneumonic plague following a laboratory accident where she reportedly broke a test tube containing pneumonic-plague bacteria while working at the institute. Russian authorities have disputed that account, saying no accident involving dangerous pathogens occurred and describing her illness as pneumonia of undetermined origin.

Russia’s health watchdog said nearly 5,000 tests of Shipilova and her contacts found no dangerous pathogens and that no plague cases have been detected. Authorities also said those who came into contact with her have remained healthy.

The World Health Organization, however, has requested additional information. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Russia informed the organization that no plague case had been reported and that about 200 contacts had been quarantined. WHO then requested more details about the tests performed, what prompted the extensive public-health response, and the condition of those being monitored.

China-Russia plague exercise draws attention

Adding to public scrutiny is a China-Russia infectious-disease exercise held just weeks before Shipilova’s death. From Aug. 24 to 27, Chinese and Russian public-health personnel participated in a cross-border emergency exercise in Fuyuan, a Chinese border city in Heilongjiang Province.

Chinese official reports confirm that the exercise included three scenarios: An emerging tick-borne disease, disease control following flooding, and an imported plague outbreak requiring a coordinated cross-border response. More than 300 emergency personnel and 40 vehicles participated.

Among the Russian representatives was Sergey Balakhonov, director of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, the same institution where Shipilova worked. Balakhonov delivered remarks at the exercise alongside Chinese health officials and Fuyuan Communist Party Secretary He Dahai.

The timing has prompted speculation on Chinese social media because the exercise took place roughly a month before Shipilova became ill.

Questions remain over cause of death

The Irkutsk case has also revived scrutiny of Russia’s Soviet-era biological weapons history. Former U.S. arms-control envoy Marshall Billingslea has argued that the institute’s historical connections deserve investigation and raised questions about whether a pathogen other than naturally occurring plague could have been involved. Those suggestions remain unproven.

Other experts have urged caution. A biosecurity researcher interviewed by Nature said there is no established evidence that the Irkutsk institute itself is currently part of Russia’s biological weapons program and warned against conflating a civilian public-health laboratory with military bioweapons facilities.