Russia's public health watchdog on Thursday denied that a lab worker who died in Siberia had spread infection to another person, as global concerns swirled about suspected pneumonic plague.
Rospotrebnadzor has said that the lab worker at a plague research institute in Irkutsk in southeastern Siberia died of pneumonia of unknown origin. In tersely worded statements, it said that “extensive” testing found no evidence her illness was caused by any of the pathogens she worked with, and it informed the World Health Organization that no case of plague has been registered in the Irkutsk region.
