WASHINGTON — President Trump said Tuesday that he will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin “very soon” about a plague scientist’s death in Siberia — and that he believes the US government will be able to share more information Wednesday.
“I have a call scheduled very soon,” Trump told reporters Tuesday evening at the White House.
Asked what US intelligence agencies are telling him, Trump said: “So far we are in very deep discussions. We will be able to report about it probably tomorrow.”
Lab technician Daria Shipilova, 28, died on Friday in a hospital outside Irkutsk, prompting a flurry of speculation that her illness was related to her work at the nearby Anti-Plague Research Institute. She died after reportedly accidentally breaking a test tube containing a deadly pathogen before being infected.
There has been significant concern that she may have died from pneumonic plague, which can spread from person to person through respiration.
The US embassy in Moscow said Tuesday that “US citizens currently in Russia should depart immediately.”
“The US Embassy is aware of press reports from the Irkutsk region of suspected pneumonic plague resulting in the death of an individual and of associated quarantine measures in, and closures of, hospitals in Irkutsk,” the embassy said.
“The US government has limited ability to help U.S. citizens in Russia, especially outside of Moscow.”
Pneumonic plague is almost always fatal, but common antibiotics can treat it.
Soviet scientists in the 1980s successfully modified the bacterium responsible for pneumonic plague, Yersinia pestis, to make it resistant to antibiotics for use as a biological weapon.
Russian officials have attempted to calm mounting panic as the case draws parallels to the suspected lab leak that the FBI and other US agencies believe touched off the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, China.
Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev said Monday that Shipilova’s relatives currently in quarantine could be discharged next week, the independent Moscow Times reported.
The neighboring republic of Buryatia’s leader, Alexei Tsydenov, said Shipilova died from the plague, but later edited his statement to say “maybe,” the Times reported.
However, leading American scientists are expressing alarm.
“The evidence supports a tragic exposure to a lethal, presumably transmissible pathogen that Russia appears reluctant to publicly identify,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist Kevin Esvelt wrote on X.
“Physical lockdown indicates it cannot be controlled with prophylactic antibiotics, implying engineered pan-resistance or that it isn’t plague at all,” Esvelt wrote.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
