Almost 200 people hospitalised with suspected plague in Siberia, Russia

Almost 200 people with suspected plague have been hospitalised in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, Russia, according to The Moscow Times.

Citing local media in an article published on 2 October, The Moscow Times wrote that 189 people suspected of having the plague have been identified and hospitalised.

The outbreak is believed to have begun when Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute, accidentally broke a test tube containing pneumonic-plague bacteria on 25 September while working at the institute. According to a report published by Lyudi Baikala, she later became seriously ill and died a couple of days after being admitted to hospital on 29 September.

These almost 200 people in question were placed in two hospitals, and 12 were sent to the Anti-Plague Institute for observation. Some of them are showing symptoms of the disease, but infection has not yet been confirmed. People who had recently seen the hospitalised individuals are also being identified for investigation, the source added.

However, another version of the story has that she had recently returned from a work trip to Buryatia, where a plague outbreak was reported on the border with Mongolia.

Plague is an acute infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The main forms of the disease are bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic. Humans are most often infected through the bites of infected fleas on rodents. The pneumonic form can be transmitted from person to person through the respiratory tract.

According to The Moscow Times, the last recorded case of plague in Russia occurred in 2016 in Altai, when a 10-year-old boy contracted the disease after butchering a marmot and contracting the disease through broken skin. Thanks to prompt treatment, the boy survived. Natural plague foci persist in Mongolia. In 2023, Mongolia's National Center for the Study of Zoonotic Infections identified 137 such outbreaks in 17 regions of the country, including areas bordering Russia.