Trump Says US Closely Watching Russian Lab Death Amid Plague Concerns

US President Donald Trump says Washington is closely monitoring the death of a Russian laboratory technician at a plague research centre in Siberia, amid concerns that pneumonic plague could spread beyond the facility.

Trump said the US was looking “very strongly” at the case, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said American officials were watching developments closely but there was no immediate cause for alarm.

The technician, identified by Russian media as Daria and reportedly in her late 20s, died after developing pneumonia. Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev said the official cause of death was “pneumonia of undetermined etiology” and that tests had found no microorganisms connected to her work in her biological samples.

Unconfirmed reports suggested she may have become ill after breaking a test tube containing a plague pathogen or following a recent trip to Buryatia, a region near the Mongolian border where plague occurs naturally among wild rodents. Russian authorities have not confirmed either account.

Russian health authorities said no other workers at the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East had sought medical attention since the technician’s death. Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer and health watchdog, said a biological safety team inspected the facility and found no emergency situation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged the public to ignore rumours and rely on official statements from Rospotrebnadzor. Russian media, however, reported that almost 200 people who had contact with the woman were being medically monitored as a precaution.

Rubio said the main concern was whether an infection at the laboratory could have spread internally or potentially escaped into the wider community. “If something like that gets out, it can quickly spread,” he said, while stressing that the situation was not currently a reason for panic.

The concern centres on Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. Pneumonic plague can spread between people through respiratory particles and can become fatal if treatment is delayed, although antibiotics can successfully treat the infection when it is diagnosed promptly.

Dr Simon Clarke, an associate professor of cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said pneumonic plague remains a serious disease but cautioned against drawing comparisons with the Covid-19 pandemic. He said the bacterium continues to occur naturally in some parts of the world, making research into it necessary.

US officials have not suggested that the Russian incident is linked to a deliberate biological attack. Asked whether the pathogen could have been studied for weapons purposes, Clarke said that was possible but considered a conventional laboratory infection more likely.

Trump said he had not discussed the incident with the Kremlin but indicated that the US would offer assistance if needed. “Everybody who has that kind of a problem, we’ll always help,” he said.

The incident has renewed attention on the risks associated with laboratories studying dangerous pathogens, although Russian authorities currently say there is no evidence of an emergency at the Siberian research centre.