It seems like a long time ago that the world was living through the terror of the Covid pandemic’s final lockdown. Economies, including the UK's, are still recovering from the hammer blow of its chaos across the globe as the bug claimed seven million lives.
Russian scientist Daria Shipilova, 28, died from a suspected plague outbreak.
A team in the laboratory at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute in Siberia.
The source of Covid-19 is still shrouded in mystery after China denied claims the virus leaked from a secret lab in Wuhan. But doomsday boffins are now anxiously looking east again after a lab scientist’s sudden death raised the spectre of history’s most feared disease — The Black Death.
This time, concerns centre on Vladimir Putin’s Russia — a despotic regime that is every bit as ruthless, secretive and dangerous as President Xi Jinping’s China.
Russian scientist Daria Shipilova was working at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute in Siberia when she was reported to have been exposed to the pneumonic plague virus.
Russian sources claimed Shipilova, 28, got ill after telling medical staff she had accidentally broken a test tube holding live Black Death plague bacteria Yersinia pestis. She became unwell on a field expedition with colleagues in Buryatia, on Russia’s eastern border with Mongolia, and died two days after being put on a hospital ventilator on September 29.
Her sudden death sparked the immediate quarantine of 189 people who had been in contact with her at the lab in Shelekhov. The regional Irkutsk branch of the Moscow State Technical University of Civil Aviation cancelled classes after staff were told of a “case of pneumonic plague in Shelekhov”.
Hazmat suit-wearing officials have been spotted in Russia.
Concerns of a cover-up centre on Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Three-week quarantine restrictions have also been ordered at Irkutsk City Clinical Hospitals Nos. 1, 3 and 10 and Ivano-Matreninskaya Children’s Hospital, as well as a maternity unit. Relatives have been barred from wards amid reports anxious medical staff have been “talking about plague” even though the diagnosis is not on official documents.
The Irkutsk Aluminium Smelter works in Shelekhov, employing more than 2,000 people, also ordered workers to wear masks amid fears the air-borne plague bug could spread. Site boss Artyom Fominykh complained of “many rumours and contradictory information”.
Drugs to treat the disease were reported to be running out across the region as terrified residents besieged pharmacies and medical units demanding supplies.
Concerns over a potentially catastrophic cover-up were also mounting last night after pro-Putin officials suddenly changed Shipilova’s cause of death. State health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor now insists her diagnosis was “pneumonia of unknown aetiology” rather than the plague lung bug.
Russia’s top public-health official, Anna Popova, a Putin crony and epidemiologist, is known to have flown to Irkutsk to manage the health crisis last week.
Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute leads a plague-response drill at the Russia-Mongolia border crossing in April 2026.
Workers in full protective gear have been filmed by residents in Russia’s Irkutsk region.
But neither Popova nor the region’s Putin-puppet governor, Igor Kobzev, have made any comment about the risk of the killer disease spreading, despite local fury.
The White House confirmed that it is monitoring the Russian outbreak, as concern went global. An official in the Trump administration said it was “aware, monitoring the outbreak and assessing options”.
Meanwhile, governor Kobzev tried — and failed — to quell alarm by insisting no one in contact with the victim has tested positive as the quarantine zone expanded.
More confusion spread as Russian officials began parroting a new version of events over the weekend. Buryatia governor Alexey Tsydenov initially said a woman in the neighbouring Irkutsk region had “died of the plague”. But the wording of his statement has now changed to say she “possibly” died from the disease.
Officials insisted the risk of spread was under control — but failed to explain why such serious quarantine crackdowns were in place.
Pneumonic plague causes a severe lung infection. Symptoms, which include fever, shortness of breath and coughing up blood, appear between three and seven days after contact. It kills unless treated but fatalities drop to around 17 per cent if anti-biotics are administered within the first 24 hours of infection.
The World Health Organisation says untreated pneumonic plague can be fatal within 18 to 24 hours of symptoms appearing — and without early treatment is almost always fatal. It is the only form of plague which spreads directly between people, through breath droplets.
The scientist, circled, fell ill while on an expedition on the border between Russia and Mongolia.
Central Asian states Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have tightened health checks at borders.
Early symptoms can be mistaken for flu — and undiagnosed victims can deteriorate quickly.
Mikhail Favorov, a senior Russian epidemiologist, fuelled further concern by ruling out the test tube story initially given by authorities. Favorov said of that: “It’s laughable. Everyone at the Anti-Plague Institute in Irkutsk wears a protective anti-plague suit. If you break a test tube, the likelihood of infection is very low. But he added: “The public will believe the test-tube story. We will not be told what really happened.”
The pneumonic is one of three plague types caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Bubonic Plague, spread by flea bites, and blood virus Septicemic Plague also fuelled the horrific pandemic which killed nearly two thirds of Europe’s population in the mid-14th Century.
Disease expert Dr Simon Clarke, Associate Professor in Cellular Microbiology at the University of Reading, also cast doubt on Russia’s test-tube claim. He said: “Reports from Russia have drawn comparisons with Covid-19, but pneumonic plague is very different. One claim is that a lab worker may have been infected after breaking a test tube. It is not unheard of for pathogens to escape from labs, but an awful lot must have gone wrong for a lab worker to be infected by a broken test tube. Having worked in high-containment laboratories, I know handling dangerous pathogens involves multiple layers of protection. We also don’t use test tubes much. Until more details emerge, it is difficult to assess whether this represents an isolated case, an occupational exposure, or evidence of wider transmission. Transparency, rapid diagnosis and effective contact-tracing would be the most important factors in managing an outbreak.”
Meanwhile, the anxiety over pneumonic plague comes amid continuing concern about Russia’s secret bioweapons programme. US intelligence has repeatedly found evidence suggesting that Putin boffins are working on a new generation of super-toxic weapons using viruses under military control.
The Kremlin is known to have funded a network of secret labs run by the 48th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defence. But monitors say the Shelekhov site where the scientist was reported to have been infected is not one of the sites ruled off-limits to international inspectors.
Irkutsk’s Anti-Plague Institute is believed to run routine field trips to trap wild rodents, test fleas and monitor for sudden plague spikes. But the exact nature of plague victim Shipilova’s work and events leading to her death remain cloaked in secrecy.
THE DEADLIEST PANDEMIC EVER
- THE Black Death is widely considered history’s deadliest pandemic. It killed up to 200million worldwide, including nearly two thirds of Europe’s population, from 1346 to 1353.
- Many of the deaths were caused by Bubonic Plague, carried by fleas living on black rats.
- Victims died in agony as their bodies became covered in “buboes” – swollen lymph nodes in the groin, neck and armpits which often turned black.
- The Black Death was the macabre theme of nursery rhyme Ring A Ring O’ Roses, in which “atishoo, atishoo we all fall down” referred to deaths.
- The Pneumonic Plague now sparking fears in Russia is much more infectious than Bubonic Plague, as it is airborne and kills quickly if untreated.
- Black Death victims were used in history’s earliest biological warfare when infected corpses were catapulted by Mongols into the besieged Genoese trading port of Caffa in 1346.
- Bubonic Plague is still carried by infected fleas on animals in African nations and parts of the US.
- Britain is not one of the nations where plague is still harboured by wildlife.
- Plague viruses are treatable by modern antibiotics, if quickly diagnosed.
- Bubonic Plague has a fatality rate of 30 to 60 per cent if untreated, and Pneumonic Plague nearly 100 per cent. The former drops to ten per cent with antibiotics, the latter to 17 per cent.
