President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that US officials did not believe the reported death of a Russian laboratory worker was connected to a bioweapon, while calling for more information from Moscow about the case and the country’s response.
“We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. The 28-year-old worker died last week after becoming ill while employed at an institute in Siberia that studies plague, drawing international attention to the case.
Russian authorities have imposed quarantines and other measures, while providing limited public information about the circumstances of the death. The response has attracted particular attention because it goes beyond the normal measures associated with a single reported plague-linked death.
Trump said Russian officials had reassured their US counterparts that the situation was under control. He acknowledged similarities with the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, when Chinese officials initially said the virus had been contained before it spread internationally.
“China didn’t say much, and Russia is not saying much either,” Trump said. “But they do say they have it very much under control.” He added that he expected Russian authorities to provide more information following US concerns that Moscow had not been forthcoming.
“I just met with our people. We have brilliant experts,” Trump said. “They know everything about what’s going on. And, all of that information is going through them.”
The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that Russian authorities had informed it that the worker had suffered a community-acquired case of pneumonia. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organisation was also seeking information about unconfirmed reports that a second employee at the Siberian laboratory had developed pneumonia of unknown cause.
WHO officials said they still did not know which pathogen caused the first worker’s fatal illness, what pathogens Russian laboratories had tested for or why about 200 contacts had been placed under quarantine or medical observation. Without that information, the organisation said, it could not fully assess the public health risk.
Russia’s public health agency said earlier that the laboratory worker had died after being diagnosed with pneumonia of “unknown” origin. On Wednesday, it said the situation was “stable” and that plague had not been detected in follow-up tests involving thousands of people in the region.
“Preventive and anti-epidemic measures have been carried out comprehensively; there are no epidemic risks to the population of Irkutsk and the Irkutsk Region,” the agency said.
A Russian news report alleged that the technician had broken a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen on September 25, after which she became ill and was taken to hospital. She died the following Friday. The account was not established by the Russian authorities cited in the report.
The Trump administration sent a formal diplomatic message to Russia this week requesting further information about the death. Erica Schwartz, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Wednesday that the “threat to the United States is extremely low”.
Schwartz said about 200 flights arrive in the United States from Siberia each year and that federal agencies were monitoring arrivals from the region. There are no direct flights from Russia to the US because of sanctions and the suspension of service following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, although travellers can reach the United States through hubs including Istanbul.
Schwartz said pneumonic plague is “highly treatable” with antibiotics when cases are identified early.
