The World Health Organization is unable to fully assess the risk after the death of a 28-year-old lab worker in Irkutsk, Siberia. The woman worked at a Russian institute that studies plague.
“We still do not have the full picture of what happened and we are not able to fully assess the risks“, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva. He stressed that timely, full and transparent sharing of information is needed to clarify conflicting reports and assess the potential risk to public health.
The WHO, the United States and the European Union have called on Russia to provide additional data. According to the local media outlet “Peoples of Baikal“ The employee may have contracted pneumonic plague after breaking a test tube. This version has not been confirmed by Russian authorities.
Adding further concern is the information about a second possible case at the same laboratory. Tedros said that the WHO is trying to verify media reports that another employee has contracted pneumonia of unknown cause.
According to Tedros, Russia has informed the organization that no recent case of plague has been registered in the Irkutsk region. About 200 people who were in contact with the deceased woman have been quarantined.
Moscow rejects media versions
The Kremlin said that the "vast majority" of publications about the death of the laboratory employee are false. Russian authorities have said there is no epidemic risk in Siberia.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov called for information about a possible second case to be verified through the state health agency “Rospotrebnadzor“. “The media is saying a lot of things. And the vast majority of what the media is reporting about this situation is false information“, Peskov said.
He added that he had no information about a US request to Moscow for further clarification, specifying that Russia had already informed the WHO.
Separately, US President Donald Trump said that a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the situation was planned and would take place “very soon”. However, Peskov said that at the moment such a conversation has not been the subject of specific discussions.
Sources: bta.bg