Russia has dismissed reports of a second suspected plague case in Siberia as “false information”, after the World Health Organization sought clarification.
According to Al Jazeera, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organisation had received reports of the suspected second case and had asked Russian authorities for more information.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, rejected the reports, saying the “vast majority” of media coverage about the situation was false.
“There is a great deal of media coverage, and the vast majority of what the media are reporting about this situation is false information,” Peskov said, urging people to rely on information from Russia’s health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor.
The controversy follows the death of 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, a worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, who developed pneumonia and died last week. Russian authorities have described her illness as pneumonia of unknown cause and have not confirmed that she had plague.
The WHO has said it still does not have enough information to determine what caused Shipilova’s illness and has asked Russia for further details, including information related to the reported second pneumonia case.
Rospotrebnadzor has maintained that testing has found no dangerous pathogens and that there is no epidemic risk to the population.
The reported second case has not been independently confirmed as plague.
The WHO has sought further information from Russia over reports of a second employee at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute developing pneumonia of an undetermined cause. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency does not yet have enough information to fully assess the situation.
“We don’t yet have the full picture of this event and we’re not able to conduct a full risk assessment,” Tedros said, stressing the need for timely and transparent information from Russian authorities.
WHO official Maria Van Kerkhove said the agency was also seeking details about the illness that killed the first worker. “We don’t understand how she was infected,” she said, adding that WHO wants to establish what caused the woman’s illness and death.