Russia plays down plague fears and denies lab accident, says scientist died of “pneumonia of unknown origin”

Updated on: October 5, 2026 / 12:32 PM EDT / CBS News

Russia's government played down concerns Monday sparked by media reports that a female scientist in Siberia might have died of exposure to the plague after a lab accident.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that the state health watchdog known as Rospotrebnadzor was the "lead agency with expertise in this area," and he urged Russians to "listen to official information" from its "highly qualified professionals."

The researcher who died has been identified by the Russian reports as Darya Shipilova, 28, who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute more than 2,500 miles east of Moscow.

Russian media initially reported that she broke a test tube containing plague bacteria in late September, came down with severe pneumonia and then died of her illness on Oct. 1.

The plague bacterium referred to by the reports is yersinia pestis, the same one that caused the Black Death that swept across Europe in the mid-1300s, killing an estimated 25-50 million people. That pandemic, often referred to as the bubonic plague, was spread by fleas living on rodents and other animals in close proximity to — and in the same grim sanitary conditions as —…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/world/