Russian Lab Worker Dies After 'Breaking Test Tube Containing The Plague'
How worried should we be about news of a potential outbreak of the medieval pneumonic plague?
00:55 Dr Malik Gibani, Clinical Associate Professor in Bacterial Vaccinology at ICL.
02:19 Marco Rubio, United States Secretary of State.
02:54 Dr Simon Clarke, Associate Professor in Cellular Microbiology at the University of Reading.
03:53 Donald Trump, President of the United States.
04:30 Professor Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor of Government at the University of Essex who specialises in authoritarian states.
US officials are monitoring a plague outbreak in Russia which has claimed the life of a lab technician.
Hundreds of people have been placed into quarantine after Darya Shipilova, 28, was exposed to pneumonic plague after breaking a test tube.
The White House said that the US administration is ‘monitoring the outbreak and assessing options.’
According to Russian media, Ms Shipilova told medical staff she had accidentally broken a test tube holding live bacteria.
She became unwell on a field expedition with colleagues near Russia’s border with Mongolia.
She was admitted to hospital on September 29 and placed on a ventilator but died two days later. Two hundred people she came into contact with are now being closely monitored.
The pneumonic plague causes a severe lung infection, fever, shortness of breath and symptoms of coughing up blood. The disease is almost always fatal if left untreated. Antibiotics can reduce the fatality rate to around 17 per cent.
Mikhail Favorov, a senior Russian epidemiologist, dismissed the broken test tube explanation, according to the Moscow Times.
He said: “It's laughable. Someone working at the Anti-Plague Institute in Irkutsk wears a protective anti-plague suit.
“If you break a test tube, the likelihood of infection is actually very low. In short, it doesn't matter to the general public – they'll believe the "broken test tube" story.
“It's absolutely hair-raising. We will not be told what really happened.”