US and EU officials said on Monday they were closely monitoring a suspected case of pneumonic plague in Russia that killed a lab worker in a Siberian research institute, prompting authorities there to quarantine dozens of people.
“We don’t have a lot of intel,” one US health official told The Washington Post: “We should be alert but not panicked.” Central Asian countries tightened sanitary border controls, even as the Kremlin denied reports of plague and urged media to “to ignore various rumors” amid widespread censorship, The Insider reported.
“Russia is well known to have an active military biological weapons program,” the Biden administration’s coronavirus response coordinator noted, suggesting that Moscow’s lack of transparency means “we have to build up our biodefense accordingly.”