The big unanswered question about Russia’s ‘plague’ death

The recent death of a lab worker at a plague research institute sparked fears of another pandemic. But on 7 October, Russia’s health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said it was ending precautionary measures and that most of the nearly 200 people put under quarantine have been released, after tests found no dangerous pathogens. Was this all much ado about nothing? After all, we still don’t know what caused the pneumonia that killed the lab worker, nor, if it was plague, how she became infected. And the most pressing question of all: why did Russia respond so dramatically to her death? The measures taken went beyond what would be expected for a case of plague. There are two broad possibilities: conspiracy or colossal screw-up. What we know is that Daria Shipilova, a 28-year-old lab worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia, died of pneumonia on 2 October, three days after being admitted to a local hospital. A “DN Shipilova” is an author on an abstract from a conference earlier this year about testing plague strains for antibiotic resistance, suggesting Shipilova worked directly with the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis. Advertisement After her death, nearly 200 people who might have had contact with her were placed in quarantine. Around 60 employees at the institute were reportedly locked in for days, and Federal Security Service officers escorted ambulances carrying those quarantined. The head of Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, is said to have travelled to Irkutsk – a 6-hour flight from Moscow – on 2 October for an emergency meeting about “a particularly dangerous infection”, and some local companies imposed mask mandates. The thing is, there are many plague cases around the world each year and they don’t trigger this kind of response. This is because basic hygiene measures can prevent the spread of the bacterium, while prompt treatment with antibiotics can stop people who might have been infected from developing any symptoms. For instance, in 2025, a young man in Arizona died of pneumonic plague – where Y. pestis infects the lungs – acquired from sick cats. The 46 people he had potentially been in contact with were given a seven-day course of antibiotics, in line with guidelines from the World Health Organization. End of story. So why did Russia quarantine all contacts? One explanation is that health officials knew Shipilova was exposed to something more dangerous than a natural strain of Y. pestis. “Physical lockdown indicates it cannot be controlled with prophylactic antibiotics, implying engineered pan-resistance or that it isn’t plague at all,” biologist Kevin Esvelt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology posted on social media. The response “clearly indicates that Russia believes an epidemic is possible – and that the responsible agent is likely a pandemic weapon or otherwise embarrassing for the government”. Esvelt created the first artificial gene drive capable of wiping out an entire species, and has since pivoted to preventing bioterrorism. He may well be right. There are certainly good reasons to suspect a cover-up. We know that the Soviet Union had a massive bioweapons programme that included trying to make Y. pestis resistant to antibiotics (the “engineered pan-resistance” Esvelt mentioned), and it had a long history of denying related accidents. For instance, in 1979, at least 68 people died after the accidental release of anthrax from a bioweapons facility in the city of Sverdlovsk. The Soviet Union claimed the deaths were caused by food poisoning. What’s more, a 2006 paper by Raymond Zilinskas at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California says the Irkutsk institute was involved in bioweapon research, though this was only “a small portion” of its activities. Bioweapons research has continued in Russia and probably expanded recently, though there is no evidence the Irkutsk institute is still involved. The other explanation is a secondary screw-up: that the officials who imposed the quarantine measures didn’t know what killed Shipilova and leapt to the conclusion it was something nasty. It can take three days to test for Y. pestis, after all, so the results might not have been available on 2 October. Even if the results were known, officials might not have believed them, given Russia’s history of lying about such things. Alternatively, maybe Shipilova had a strain of plague that could have been treated with antibiotics if they had been given early enough (all the strains that were tested in the abstract linked to her were susceptible to these drugs), but officials overreacted because they weren’t aware of the appropriate procedures. What really happened may never be clear. After all, Russia doesn’t have a reputation for being trustworthy – so even if it tells the truth, we won’t know it. [Image text:] WTh nOTPESHT 4EJOBEKA