A Plague Mystery in Siberia

As if there weren’t enough to worry about in the world: Do we also have an outbreak of the plague? The Black Death? Now?

The short answer is: We don’t know. The slightly longer answer is: A woman who worked in a remote Siberian lab that studies plague has died of pneumonia — or so we’re told. The lab has been locked down, and the Russian authorities aren’t saying much, which has fueled speculation and rumors.

But we’ve got you. My colleagues have gathered all the available information to try to make as much sense of it as possible. (Spoiler alert: Don’t panic.)

A mysterious death and an old foe of humanity

So who died, exactly?

Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee of Irkutsk’s Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East, seems to have died of a mysterious pneumonia illness earlier this month. Her death prompted Russian health authorities to quarantine employees and patients at the hospital where she died, along with the institute’s staff and other people who were in contact with her.

Wait — the plague still exists?

Yes. The plague has been with us for a very long time. Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes plague, has infected humans for thousands of years, also circulating among rodents and fleas that serve as long-term reservoirs.

Many people associate the plague with the Black Death, a pandemic that is thought to have killed at least a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. But there are still a few hundred cases recorded each year, mostly in Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also in the United States, Russia and other countries.

Are we talking about the bubonic plague?

There are three main ways that plague can infect humans. Bubonic plague occurs when the plague-causing bacteria multiplies in the lymph nodes, usually after a bite from an infected flea. Septicemic plague occurs when the infection spreads to the bloodstream. The most virulent type is pneumonic plague, which causes a severe rapid-onset lung infection and can be spread through a cough or a sneeze.

That seems bad! Is it?

Based on the information we have so far, most experts aren’t too worried.

Left untreated, pneumonic plague can kill a victim within days. But all three types of plague respond well to antibiotics if they are taken soon after exposure.

Then why the alarm?

The fact that Shipilova worked in a lab studying plague, a facility that is supposed to have robust protections to prevent the microbe from escaping, is concerning.

“Something is not adding up about this situation,” Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University, told my colleague K.R. Calloway. “The worker should not have contracted a fatal infection if she had been wearing personal protective equipment and had received antibiotics immediately after her exposure.”

The lack of details from the Russian authorities has also unnerved many around the world who remain scarred by the Covid-19 pandemic. In that case, it was an authoritarian government in China, where the virus originated, that covered up information.

In the immediate aftermath of Shipilova’s death, Russian authorities were terse. They failed to clarify her whereabouts before her death, or to address questions about whether an accident had taken place at the institute.

After health officials and the U.S. government began asking questions, the Russian authorities provided additional information. (On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was “incumbent” upon Russia to share more with the world. “We’re watching it very closely, hour by hour,” he said.)

Russian authorities said yesterday that Shipilova had been vaccinated against the plague and that no “emergency situations” had been identified at the lab. (One caveat: It’s not clear how effective the available vaccines are.)

Russia’s health regulator also said there were “no epidemiological risks for the population of Irkutsk and the Irkutsk region.”

Has plague ever been used as a bioweapon?

Maybe — but it’s been a while. In the 14th century, according to one account, a Mongol army catapulted plague-infested bodies into the Crimean city of Caffa. Historians and epidemiologists disagree about whether that incident led to the epidemic that decimated Europe. It could also have started with flea-ridden rats in grain shipments.

In the modern era, a defector from the Soviet Union’s bioweapons program once claimed that his government stockpiled “dozens of tons of smallpox and plague” that could be loaded onto bombs and missiles. But even that was decades ago.

So no need to panic?

Based on what we know so far, that’s correct. For all the unknowns, experts have told my colleagues that, even if plague were confirmed to have caused Shipilova’s death, the risk of widespread contagion would be limited.

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