Hospital in Russia’s Irkutsk region quarantined amid reports that a patient died of pneumonic plague

The inpatient department at a district hospital in Shelekhov, in Russia’s Irkutsk region, has been closed because one of its patients is suspected of having a “particularly dangerous infection.”

Reports that the Shelekhov district hospital’s inpatient department had closed appeared on social media on the evening of October 1. The next day, district mayor Maxim Modin confirmed that it was under quarantine. The hospital’s outpatient clinic remains open.

The news outlet Lyudi Baikala, the Telegram channel Mash, and the television network REN TV reported that one of the hospital’s patients, 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, died of pneumonic plague. Mash and REN TV both have close ties to law enforcement and security agencies.

According to one account, she was admitted with pneumonic plague after returning from Thailand. Another identifies the woman who died as a lab technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute who accidentally broke a test tube containing the plague pathogen. She was hospitalized on September 29 and died two days later.

There has been no official announcement of the patient’s death. Governor Igor Kobzev said the regional government had convened a special meeting of the regional commission on sanitation and epidemic prevention. The meeting was called in response to information “about a suspected case of a particularly dangerous infection in a resident of the region.” He did not specify the infection. Anna Popova, Russia’s chief sanitary officer, traveled to attend the meeting.

According to Kobzev, Russia’s public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, is taking “a full range of epidemic-control measures.” People who had been in contact with the patient were “placed under medical observation.” They have no signs of illness.

REN TV reported that nearly 200 people had been in contact with the patient and that 189 of them were hospitalized for observation.

Update: Buryatia’s leader Alexey Tsydenov confirmed that the woman who died at a hospital in the neighboring Irkutsk region had died of plague. He also said she had not visited Buryatia and that there were no plague outbreaks in the republic. Tsydenov later edited his post to say that the woman “may have died of plague.”

According to official figures, 3,248 plague cases and 584 deaths were recorded worldwide from 2010 to 2015. Russia’s most recent case was recorded in 2016, when a 10-year-old child in the Altai Republic fell ill.

A plague vaccine exists. The national vaccination schedule calls for vaccinating people in areas where plague occurs naturally when the threat from the disease to animals and humans increases. It also calls for vaccinating people who work with live cultures of the plague pathogen.