Health Minister Marjorie Michel said Monday that Canada is “very closely following reports” of a possible pneumonic plague death at a research institute in Siberia, adding there is no risk to Canada.
The case involves a woman who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Russia. She died in a hospital in Shelekhov, just outside Irkutsk, according to reports relayed by Global News and The Canadian Press.
Russian authorities have attributed the death to pneumonia of an unknown origin and said there is no evidence that the pathogens she worked with caused her illness, The Canadian Press reported. Siberian media outlets have reported she died of pneumonic plague, the severe lung-based form of the disease. The cause of death has not been independently confirmed, and the situation is developing.
Michel said the federal government is working with the World Health Organization and other countries to monitor events. “There’s no risk to Canada,” she said, according to CJME. The Public Health Agency of Canada has also said it has identified no current risk to Canada while it follows the situation closely.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington is also watching developments carefully, The Canadian Press reported.
Local authorities placed the hospital under quarantine and traced people who had contact with the woman. Russian officials told the WHO that test results showed no dangerous infectious disease pathogens in any of those contacts, that medical monitoring of all contacts has concluded and that the epidemiological situation is stable, Global News reported.
The WHO has rated the risk outside Russia as very low. It put the risk at moderate to low for the Irkutsk region, low for Russia as a whole and very low for the European region, according to Global News.
Dr. Glenn Wortmann of MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington told Global News the plague bacterium does not “travel very far” and that transmission requires close contact with an infected person.
Pneumonic plague develops when the bacterium that causes plague infects the lungs. It spreads through respiratory droplets, and its incubation period can be as short as 24 hours. The disease responds well to antibiotics when treated promptly, Global News reported.
Plague is best known for the Black Death, which killed millions in Europe in the 14th century. It still occurs in parts of the world, mostly as bubonic plague spread by fleas from infected animals, and modern antibiotics have made it treatable.
Research institutes such as the one in Irkutsk study plague and other dangerous pathogens, which is why a death among staff has drawn scrutiny. Russian authorities have not said what the woman was working on before she became ill.
It was not clear Tuesday whether further testing would be released to establish the cause of death. The WHO has not announced any change to its risk assessment.
Canadians who are planning travel to Russia can check the federal government’s travel advice for current health notices.
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Via CTV News, with additional reporting from CJME / The Canadian Press and Global News.
