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Pneumonia Plague in Russia: Boris Yeltsin Admitted the 1979 Lab Leak. But Moscow Says Siberia is Different.
Nearly six years after the COVID outbreak, there are fears of another health emergency after reports of the death of a Russian researcher in a suspected case of plague, which has prompted authorities to quarantine over 200 people in the remote Siberian region and enforce strict mask mandates.
Notably, reports suggest that the suspected plague bacteria might have originated from a Russian Anti-Plague Institute, bringing attention to Russia’s secretive biological weapons research programs and bringing back memories of the deadly 1979 Anthrax outbreak in the Soviet Union, which also originated from a research facility.
Authorities have acknowledged the death of a researcher due to a “suspected case of a particularly dangerous infection,” described as “pneumonia of unknown etiology.” However, federal authorities deny any lab release and say tests found no work-related pathogens.
However, concerns remain that Russia is hiding crucial details about the outbreak that could hinder an effective response.
The 28-year-old lab technician Darya Shipilova died on October 2 after reportedly breaking a test tube with live Yersinia pestis at an Anti-Plague Institute on September 25 while handling samples.
According to Russia’s national public health agency, Rospotrebnadzor, the researcher worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Shelekhov.
Meanwhile, independent regional outlet Liudi Baikala reported that the death of the lab technician has prompted authorities to place nearly 200 people under observation at a hospital and enforce strict mask mandates in the region.
Igor Kobzev, the governor of Irkutsk, noted on Telegram that this was in response to a “suspected case of a particularly dangerous infection.”
Alexey Tsydenov, the head of the neighboring region of Buryatia, said the woman “may have died of the plague.”
Meanwhile, US media outlet Axios reported that the White House is monitoring reports of a suspected plague case and related quarantines in Russia.
Russian health authorities, however, are trying to downplay the incident, saying the situation is under control and rejecting reports of a lab leak.
In a statement issued on October 4, Rospotrebnadzor said the “sanitary and epidemiological situation” in Irkutsk and Shelekhov was “stable,” Forbes reported.
The agency further said it conducted extensive testing and found no pathogens linked to the deceased patient’s laboratory work in her sample.
It added that testing of hundreds of people in primary or secondary contact with the deceased researcher has detected no new infections.
According to the World Health Organization, Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, a zoonotic bacterium usually found in small mammals and their fleas. People infected with Y. pestis often develop symptoms after an incubation period of one to seven days.
Bubonic plague is the most common clinical form.
Plague is transmitted between animals and humans through bites from infected fleas, direct contact with infected tissues, and inhalation of infected respiratory particles.
Plague can be a very severe disease in people, with a case-fatality ratio of 30% to 60% for the bubonic type, and it is always fatal for the pneumonic and septicemic kinds when left untreated.
Pneumonic plague is especially contagious and can trigger severe epidemics through person-to-person transmission via respiratory particles.
Historically, plague caused widespread pandemics with high mortality. It was known as the “Black Death” during the fourteenth century, causing more than 50 million deaths in Europe.
According to some estimates, Black Death wiped out one-third to one-half of the European population between 1347 and 1353.
Today, however, antibacterial medicines have greatly reduced plague fatality rates.
According to the WHO, during 2019–2025, most plague cases reported to the WHO occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar.
While Russian authorities are rejecting the lab-leak theory, saying there are no links to the lab technician’s death and her research work at the Anti-Plague Institute, Moscow’s previous record in handling such lab-leak incidents and hiding crucial information has prompted fears that it is hiding more information than it is sharing.
Notably, the lab-leak theory has brought back the painful memories of the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak, which, according to the official Soviet Union version, led to the death of 66 people, but according to independent researchers, caused the death of over a hundred people.
The 1979 Sverdlovsk Anthrax Leak In The Soviet Union
In April 1979, a missing or improperly reinstalled exhaust filter at Compound 19, a military microbiology facility involved in the Soviet biological-weapons program, released aerosolized Bacillus anthracis spores.
Over the next few hours, wind carried the plume over the city. People in the plume developed inhalation anthrax over the following days; livestock in the area were also affected.
The Soviet authorities initially suggested the bacteria spread through “contaminated meat.”
However, hospital records, autopsy and epidemiologic evidence, victim interviews, independent research, and Russia’s own investigation in 1992 showed that the pathology was inhalation anthrax, not the gastrointestinal form claimed in the official “contaminated meat” story, and that most of the infections clustered geographically along the wind direction from the facility, and the strain matched material worked on at the site, establishing the lab leak theory.
Boris Yeltsin, the regional Communist Party official at the time who later became Russian president, publicly acknowledged in 1992 that the outbreak came from the military facility.
A 1994 investigation led by Matthew Meselson, which had access to official records and used wind data, victim locations, and strain comparisons, confirmed an accidental airborne release of a laboratory strain.
In 2016, researchers finally sequenced the genome of the bacteria behind the deaths, confirming it was a strain of the anthrax-causing bacterium Bacillus anthracis that Soviet scientists had modified.
It was one of the largest inhalation anthrax outbreaks in history and irrefutable evidence of the Soviet Union’s secret dabbling in offensive bioweapons research.
The event is sometimes called “Biological Chernobyl.”
Notably, the Soviet Union’s Compound 19 biological weapons research facility violated the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which the USSR had signed.
According to reports, the Soviets did similar tinkering with plague bacteria (Yersinia pestis); Francisella tularensis, the bacterium that causes tularemia; and Legionella bacteria, which cause Legionnaires’ disease.
There are also reports of similar leaks of deadly viruses and bacteria from Soviet biological weapons labs in the past.
For instance, in 1971, a young scientist reportedly fell ill after a research vessel, the Lev Berg, strayed too close to Vozrozhdeniya Island in Uzbekistan, where Soviets ran a secretive biological weapons research lab. Days later, the scientist was diagnosed with smallpox.
A year later, the corpses of two missing fishermen were found nearby, drifting in their boat. It’s thought that they had caught the plague.
Clearly, the Soviets continued working on offensive biological weapons even after signing the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
There are fears that Russia continued such research even after the Soviet Union collapsed.
In fact, dangerous viruses and bacteria have leaked from labs not just in Russia, but in other countries too.
For instance, after the natural SARS epidemic ended, the virus reappeared only through laboratory accidents.
For instance, in 2003, a 27-year-old researcher was infected when West Nile virus samples were cross-contaminated with live SARS coronavirus in a BSL-3 lab in Singapore.
Similarly, after natural smallpox transmission had largely ended in the UK, accredited labs were the source of outbreaks.
In 1973, a laboratory technician at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine was infected after observing open-bench harvesting of smallpox virus. She transmitted it in the hospital before isolation; two visitors died, and a nurse was infected.
In 1978, a medical photographer, Janet Parker, whose workplace was above a smallpox laboratory in Birmingham, contracted the disease and died.
In 2015, CDC labs potentially exposed dozens of staff to live anthrax after incomplete inactivation. Separately, Dugway Proving Ground shipped inactivated anthrax spores that remained viable to nearly 200 laboratories in the US and several other countries.
In fact, researchers in the US have cataloged thousands of overt laboratory-associated infections in the 20th century alone.
According to the National Library of Medicine, “analysis of the available information revealed that only 18% of the infections were due to known accidents; 42% were caused by bacteria; 27% by viruses; 15% by rickettsiae; 9% by fungi; 3% by chlamydiae; and 3% by parasites.”
A Lancet study on ‘Laboratory-acquired infections and pathogen escapes worldwide between 2000 and 2021’ identified 309 published lab-acquired infections – eight fatal, including plague, meningococcus, Ebola, and one prion case – and 16 pathogen-escape events beyond the immediate worker, among them the Lanzhou Brucella outbreak, multiple anthrax and SARS incidents, poliovirus, and foot-and-mouth virus.
Clearly, lab leaks of viruses, bacteria, and pathogens are neither rare nor unprecedented.
However, the risks associated with such leaks increase manifold when the country of origin hides information and tries to mislead the world community to avoid responsibility.
At this stage, we can only sincerely hope that that is not the case with the death of a young Russian researcher in Siberia.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
- He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
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