President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the death of a worker at a Russian plague research center was not connected to a bioweapon.
“We don’t think so,” Trump said when asked about the possibility. “We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so.” Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president cited Russians. “If you listen to them, it’s under control,” he said, adding, “They’re saying it’s very much under control.”
Nevertheless, the United States issued a formal diplomatic complaint, known as a démarche, to Russia regarding its lack of communication surrounding the reported death of a lab worker from a plague research center in Siberia, MS NOW has learned.
“We have officially requested additional information from the Russian government,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. “We are also in official communication with other countries around the world to share information.”
The U.S. has been in contact with the Russian government since Friday, including communications between U.S. State Department health experts and the Russian Foreign Ministry, according to a State Department official.
Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old lab worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, was hospitalized on Sept. 29 with “pneumonia of unknown cause” and died in a hospital in a nearby town on Oct. 2, according to Russian media reports.
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that it had requested information from Russian health authorities, who reported that no plague case had been detected in the Irkutsk region where the lab was located, according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“They informed WHO that an epidemiological investigation had been conducted, preventive and control measures implemented, and identified contacts placed under medical observation and tested,” Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “They reported that no high-threat pathogens had been detected among the contacts and that medical observation of all identified contacts had been completed.”
Ghebreyesus said that the U.N. agency has requested further information from Russia “to clarify the cause of the severe pneumonia, the pathogen that prompted the public health measures, and media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause.”
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The Trump administration officially withdrew the U.S. from WHO earlier this year, citing its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, ending U.S. funding for and participation with the global agency responsible for international public health.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is “closely monitoring” the situation.
On Tuesday, Trump said he planned to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin “very soon.” But according to Russian state media TASS, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday there has been no specific discussion of a phone call.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked Tuesday about the reported involvement of the Russian counterintelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, and whether he had concerns that the Russian lab had intentionally modified a strain of the plague.
“It would be irresponsible for me here to sit and speculate because we just don’t have all the information yet,” Rubio told reporters in Iceland. “I think it’s incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world.”
“Maybe there’s nothing there, maybe it’s bigger than we thought,” Rubio said. “We don’t know, but I think it would be reckless at this moment, given the limited information we still have, to speculate about what this might or might not be, or what this is or what this isn’t. Suffice it to say, we’re watching it very closely.”
Julia Jester is a politics reporter for MS NOW.
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