Former CDC director questions whether Russian researcher was working with ‘manipulated’ strain of plague before death

A former CDC director has raised fears that the suspected plague case in Russia may be due to a ‘manipulated’ strain of the disease.

Dr Robert Redfield, who led the agency at the start of the Covid pandemic, told NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas Reports: ‘I’m concerned because beyond the woman [herself] that got infected, I’m looking at the response.’

He said that even though pneumonic plague, which is extremely rare but can kill a patient within 24 hours, does not often spread from person to person, ‘the Russians have reacted pretty aggressively and closed down five hospitals, isolated over 200 people.’

‘That’s not pneumonic plague,’ he added. ‘It doesn’t make sense to me that this was wild-type plague.’

He also warned that it is ‘unlikely that [a lab worker] would have died’ from wild-type plague – a strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, that has not been manipulated in a lab.

He said: ‘If she was working in a plague lab and had an accident, there would have been a protocol for her to go on antibiotics within 24 hours [of exposure to plague-causing bacteria], and she would have likely responded effectively.’

He added: ‘Now, if the plague that she was working with had been manipulated, to not be sensitive to antibiotics, which some of the bio-offensive programs that the Russians have done… have changed the susceptibility of these organisms to traditional antibiotics, that would explain why maybe they didn’t work.’

Alarm spread around the world last week after Darya Shipilova, 28, a lab worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, reportedly told fellow lab workers  that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing the live bacteria that causes pneumonic plague.

More than 200 people she came into contact with were placed into quarantine, reports suggest, alongside five hospitals, including a maternity unit, in the region.

Russian officials have claimed Shipilova died from an ‘unidentified pneumonia’ and noted that there has been evidence that her colleagues had COVID and the common cold.

But reports in local media – and statements from local officials – suggest she may have been infected with pneumonic plague, which is caused by the ‘Black Death’ bacterium Yersinia pestis, a disease that killed millions in Europe during the Middle Ages.

There is no evidence at this time that confirms that Shipilova was infected with a manipulated strain of the plague. 

Shipilova was hospitalized on September 29 and initially put on a ventilator after doctors thought her symptoms were a severe form of Covid, according to Siberia Realities, the Siberian service of the US-funded radio station Radio Liberty. She died on October 2. 

It is not clear whether she received antibiotics, which can easily treat the disease if they are administered in the early stages.

Russian epidemiologist Mikhail Favorov told Echo FM, which is considered to be one of the last independent Russian radio stations and which broadcasts from Berlin, that it was possible doctors had misidentified her infection because a plague case had not been seen in the region for at least a decade.

There are also conflicting reports as to how she became sick.

Reports in local media suggest she caught an infection after breaking a test tube in a lab, but separate reports from Russian Telegram channel Mash suggest that she was hospitalized after returning from a work trip to Buryatia, a region in Russia next to Irkutsk, where the research center is located.

Local media has since claimed that a second person has died of the plague in the Irkutsk region, but this has not been confirmed by the authorities.

Speaking today, US President Donald Trump, following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has said he is confident that the case was not caused by a manipulated strain of the plague. 

He told reporters at the White House: ‘We don’t think so. We’re going to find out.’

He added that Russian officials had assured him the situation was ‘very much under control’ but that they were ‘not saying much.’ 

Speaking at the WSJ health summit in Washington DC today, CDC director Erica Schwartz said she was ‘very confident’ that the threat to the US from the suspected plague outbreak was ‘extremely low.’

Amid fears that the suspected outbreak could spread, some countries along Russia’s border have started to tighten health controls for new entrants.

Yesterday, the US Embassy in Moscow renewed its advice not to travel to the country, saying in a statement posted online: ‘The State Department’s Level 4 Travel Advisory (Do Not Travel) for Russia remains in place and states US citizens currently in Russia should depart immediately. 

‘US citizens planning travel to Russia are again strongly advised not to travel to Russia due to risk of wrongful detention and security concerns.’

Internationally, the World Health Organization and other health bodies have appealed to Russia for more information about the suspected plague case.

The Irkutsk facility at the center of the reported fatality sits within a much broader Soviet-era scientific infrastructure that has links to military research.

During the 1970s and 1980s, reports suggest that Soviet scientists studied natural strains of the plague at the research center that could have military uses.

Dr Ken Alibek, a top researcher in Russia’s germ-warfare machine before defecting to the US in 1992, told the Daily Mail that the Soviet Union was previously working to create antibiotic-resistant versions of the plague bacterium for a potential bioweapon.

‘If amongst people who are quarantining, you’ll see more people dying, it can be antibiotic resistant,’ Alibek said.

Plague can take several forms, but its most dangerous is pneumonic plague, which infects the lungs and causes them to fill with blood and fluid, leaving someone struggling to breathe.

Without early treatment, it is nearly always fatal.

Symptoms erupt within a day of infection and doctors warn that the bacteria can be spread from person to person via respiratory transmission.

But scientists say it is rare for it to spread between people. The CDC says sustained face-to-face contact with an infected person is needed for it to spread through the air. 

The infection is also normally easily treated using antibiotics, although these need to be administered early to ensure they are effective.

About 1,000 to 2,000 cases of plague are recorded globally each year, which can also be spread by fleas and by handling the carcasses of wild animals that have been infected with the bacterium that causes the disease. 

It is not clear how many of these patients die from the disease. 

In Russia, cases have previously been reported in its Far East where the Yersinia pestis pathogen is endemic. 

In July, Mongolia’s National Center for Zoonotic Diseases (NCZD) confirmed a human plague case in Khovd province in the western part of the country. The center warned that 17 out of 21 provinces in the country were classified as plague-risk areas. 

In the US, the CDC says that about seven cases of the plague are recorded every year, mostly in northern New Mexico and Arizona where the ‘Black Death’ bacterium infects small mammals. It is not clear how many of these cases are fatal.