Officials in Russia’s Irkutsk region advised against traveling to a town where a hospital patient may have died of plague. They later deleted the post.
The administration of Baikalsk, a city in the Irkutsk region, published a Telegram post urging residents not to travel to Shelekhov, a satellite town of Irkutsk where a hospital patient may have died of pneumonic plague. It deleted the post two hours later, People of Baikal reported.
The outlet also said the national television channel Ren TV had deleted five posts about the plague’s spread in Shelekhov from its social media.
Before that, Alexei Tsydenov, the head of Buryatia, edited a post stating that the woman who died of plague had not traveled to the region. He revised the wording about the cause of death, writing that the woman had “possibly died of plague.”
On October 2, media reported that Daria Shipilova, a 28-year-old patient at the Shelekhov District Hospital, died of pneumonic plague. Authorities have not yet confirmed this, saying only that it involves a suspected case of an “especially dangerous infection.” Residents of Shelekhov and Irkutsk are buying up antibiotics effective against the plague pathogen amid the rumors, People of Baikal reported.
Russia last registered a case of plague in 2016, when a 10-year-old child fell ill in the Altai Republic.
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