A 28-year-old laboratory worker in Russia has died of plague after reportedly breaking a test tube containing plague bacteria, and up to 200 people who may have had contact with her have been placed in quarantine. The case was first reported by the independent outlet The Moscow Times and later picked up by other media.
According to those reports, the woman worked at an anti-plague institute in Irkutsk, a city in Siberia. Local media identified her as Daria Chipilova. She is said to have accidentally broken the tube, developed respiratory symptoms consistent with pneumonic plague, the form of the disease that affects the lungs, and been admitted to hospital. She died there on Thursday, about two days after the incident.
Russian authorities have spoken of an incident involving a dangerous substance but have not officially confirmed that plague is the disease involved. The Russian Ministry of Health has so far given no detailed explanation. Public gatherings in Irkutsk have been cancelled for the time being. Officials say none of the people who had contact with the woman has fallen ill. Around 100 of them have been admitted to hospital for observation, while the others are waiting out the incubation period in quarantine at home.
Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and is best known as the Black Death, which struck Europe, the Middle East and North Africa from 1347, spread by fleas carried on rats. Estimates of the death toll in the first wave, up to 1353, range from 75 to 200 million people, and outbreaks continued for roughly five centuries. The disease became rarer in the 19th century as hygiene and healthcare improved.
Today plague is treatable with antibiotics if detected early, and the risk of infection is low, although there is no vaccine. Roughly a thousand to a few thousand cases are recorded worldwide each year, mostly in places with weaker healthcare systems, such as Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo, often in remote areas. Madagascar had a major outbreak in 2017 that reached the capital and killed hundreds. The last recorded human case in Russia is believed to date from 2016, and a 10-year-old girl died of the disease elsewhere in 2021.
The case matters because it involves a laboratory handling a dangerous pathogen, and because the authorities have so far released little information. Whether the quarantine measures prove sufficient will become clear once the incubation period ends.