Rubio calls on Russia to be more transparent about plague lab worker’s death in Siberia

October 6, 2026 / 8:05 AM EDT / CBS News

Geneva — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on Russia to be more "transparent" about the recent death of a plague research center scientist and any risks associated with the incident, which Russian authorities have offered conflicting information about this week.

"I think it's incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world," Rubio said Tuesday after arriving in Iceland's capital Reykjavik for a visit. He called on Moscow to be "transparent" a day after Russia's primary national health agency denied earlier reports by local officials that the Siberian lab worker might have died of plague after a lab accident and that anti-plague measures were imposed at multiple health facilities in the wake of her death on Oct. 1 or 2.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that the public health risk in Russia and Europe was considered low after the incident in Russia's far-eastern Siberia region.

"The WHO initial risk assessment from the information available estimates the risk to be moderate to low for Irkutsk, a low risk for the Russian Federation as a whole, and very low for the WHO European region," the United Nations…

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