Russia’s health agency said Wednesday it saw “no epidemic risks” following the reported plague death of a laboratory technician in Siberia last week, as Moscow faced mounting calls for transparency.
Russian news outlet People of Baikal reported last Friday that a 28-year-old woman employed at a plague research institute in Siberia’s Irkutsk region had died of the disease — possibly after contracting it from a broken test tube.
Russian authorities have played down the reports, saying the woman died of pneumonia and the cause was “undetermined”.
“The sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region… is calm,” health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor insisted in a statement, determining that “there are no epidemic risks for the population”.
It highlighted that intensive investigations had detected “no emergencies”, and said the lab had complied with “proper control when working with pathogenic microorganisms”.
“More than 90 percent of contacts have completed medical observation,” it added.
“No health disorders associated with infectious pathology were detected,” it said, stressing that “the results of almost 5,000 laboratory tests did not reveal any dangerous pathogenic microorganisms”.
It also highlighted that the woman in question had been “vaccinated and had immunity to dangerous infections with which she worked”.
While determining there were no epidemic risks, Rospotrebnadzor said it had put in place a set of “anti-epidemic measures” out of an abundance of caution and in line with sanitary legislation.
It also stressed that it had provided information about the situation to the World Health Organization, in accordance with international health regulations.
The statement came as the WHO, along with the United States and the European Union, called for more transparency on the incident.
AFP
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