The State Department has sent a formal diplomatic note to Russia asking for more information about a possible outbreak at an anti-plague research laboratory in Siberia.
“We have officially requested additional information from the Russian government,” the department said in a statement on Tuesday. “We are also in official communication with other countries around the world to share information.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced the request publicly on Tuesday during a trip to Iceland, noting that the United States was monitoring the situation.
“I think it’s incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world,” Mr. Rubio said. “We’re watching it very closely, hour by hour.”
News of the U.S. diplomatic note, known as a démarche, was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
The plea for more information comes after Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee of the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk, died this month of a mysterious pneumonia at a hospital in Shelekhov, the town near Irkutsk where Ms. Shipilova lived.
The death prompted the Russian authorities to quarantine part of the hospital, the institute’s staff and other people whom Ms. Shipilova had come into contact with in her final days. Other facilities in and around Irkutsk have also implemented restrictive measures, in some cases as a precaution.
On Oct. 4, the Russian public health regulator, Rospotrebnadzor, released a statement saying that an employee of the institute had died from a pneumonia of unknown origin. The regulator said that laboratory tests performed on the woman’s remains had not revealed any organisms related to her professional activities.
Rospotrebnadzor said on Tuesday that monitoring and tests on 60 percent of those under observation had been concluded and that the rest were nearing completion. The regulator said no cases of plague had been detected so far.
“Laboratory tests have identified two cases of Covid-19 and two cases of rhinovirus infection,” or common cold, the regulator said, according to the Interfax news agency. “No other infectious disease pathogens were detected in any of the contacts.”
Still, the lack of details from the Russian authorities has unnerved U.S. officials and others around the world who remain scarred by the Covid-19 pandemic and efforts by the authoritarian government in China, where the virus originated, to cover up information.
Pneumonic plague causes a severe rapid-onset lung infection and is considered the most virulent form of the plague. It results from the same bacteria that causes the bubonic and septicemic plagues.
Unlike Covid-19, the disease can be treated effectively with antibiotics, but it must be caught very quickly.
Experts have said that even if plague were confirmed in the Russian case, the risk of widespread contagion would be limited. In a statement on Monday, the World Health Organization said that based on available information, “the public health risk to the general population appears to be low.”
On Tuesday, the organization’s leader, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that it had “requested further information to clarify the cause of the severe pneumonia” that killed Ms. Shipilova. He said the W.H.O. was also seeking clarity about “the pathogen that prompted the public health measures” instituted in Siberia after her death.
President Trump has offered help to Russia in dealing with the possible outbreak, but Russian officials have responded by saying that they have the situation under control.
“It is always very good when offers of mutual assistance are made,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump told reporters that he would hold a call “very soon” with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, to discuss the potential outbreak.
Elena Sofina, the deputy mayor in Shelekhov responsible for social affairs, said in a statement on Tuesday that Russian officials could handle the matter themselves. She called the situation “completely under control.”
“A dangerous diagnosis has not been confirmed, but we are still following all protocol measures,” Ms. Sofina said. “Sixty percent of patients have already been released from quarantine. We continue to work.”
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