Nocturnal 
A 28-year-old lab technician in Siberia has died of severe pneumonia just days after reports suggested she had broken a test tube containing material linked to plague at the high-security facility where she worked.
Darya Shipilova worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, a facility that specialises in studying plague and other dangerous pathogens. She died on the night of 1 to 2 October, according to the BBC.
Russian health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor says she died of “pneumonia of undetermined aetiology” and has repeatedly denied any laboratory accident took place. Officials say tests found no sign of the micro-organisms she had been working with, and that nearly 200 contacts have tested negative so far.
But confusion has swirled around the case from the start. A senior Russian official reportedly posted on social media that Shipilova “had died from the plague” before editing the post to add “possibly”, Mathrubhumi English reports. Unconfirmed reports suggested she had either broken a test tube containing the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis or picked up an infection during a field trip, though Russian authorities have dismissed both theories.
Around 200 people, including hospital staff and residents of her apartment block, were placed under observation after her death, according to the BBC and The Sun. University classes were reportedly cancelled in Irkutsk and workers at a local aluminium smelter were told to wear masks, The Sun said.
What her mother says
Shipilova’s mother, Svetlana, has accused medics of failing her daughter and officials of covering up the real cause of death, LADbible reports. She said Darya was placed on a ventilator but died, telling the outlet: “I saved more than one patient like that, but they didn’t save my daughter. They simply let my daughter die.”
Svetlana said she still hadn’t received official confirmation of her daughter’s cause of death days later and that the funeral couldn’t go ahead while relatives remained in quarantine. She also rejected the broken test-tube claim outright, saying the containers used at the institute are far too heavily protected to break by accident: “Even hypothetically, it’s simply impossible to spill or break it.”
Why it matters
Pneumonic plague, the lung-based form of the disease caused by Yersinia pestis, can have an incubation period as short as 24 hours and is fatal if not treated promptly, according to the World Health Organization. It’s the same bacterium behind the Black Death, which killed up to half of Europe’s population in the 14th century.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has publicly called for “timely, complete and transparent information sharing” from Russia, and the organisation has also asked for details on a reported second employee developing pneumonia of undetermined cause, according to Reuters.
US President Donald Trump said he would discuss the case with Vladimir Putin, telling reporters: “So far we are in very deep discussions.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said America had “measures” available to assist Russia should the situation prove more serious than officials have let on.
The UK Health Security Agency has said the risk to the UK remains “very low”, according to Sky News.
As it stands, Russia has told the WHO no plague cases have been confirmed in Irkutsk, with around 60% of identified contacts tested and no sign of the disease among them so far. The exact cause of Shipilova’s pneumonia remains officially unexplained, and her mother says she is still waiting for answers.
