The United States is monitoring reports of a suspected pneumonic-plague death involving a laboratory worker in Russia's Irkutsk region. Russian health authorities said the employee had been diagnosed with 'pneumonia of unknown aetiology', meaning pneumonia whose cause had not been identified, and have not confirmed that she had plague.
The woman worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, which is based in Irkutsk, and reportedly died after receiving treatment in nearby Shelekhov. The connection to the laboratory concerns her employment; authorities have not established that her illness resulted from a laboratory accident or occupational exposure.
