This article originally appeared on PolitiFact.
It sounds familiar: Pneumonia was reported near a laboratory that studies infectious pathogens, and the country’s government is known to have withheld adverse information.
Conflicting reports and unanswered questions about a possible pneumonic plague death in Russia on October 2 recall the early days of COVID-19.
Read more: What we know so far about Russian lab worker deaths and pneumonic plague
A laboratory worker at a Siberian anti-plague research laboratory has died of illness, with local officials initially reporting that the woman “probably died of plague.” According to the World Health Organization, the earliest reports sounded like deaths from accidental laboratory exposure to pneumonic plague. Dozens of people have been quarantined or quarantined.
The World Health Organization confirmed the woman died after being hospitalized with “severe pneumonia,” but the exact pathogen causing her illness has not been announced or independently confirmed.
Adding to the confusion: Russian authorities report that there have been no recent cases of plague in the Irkutsk oblast, Russia’s central-eastern administrative region, where all this is said to be occurring.
While the situation bears some similarities to coronavirus news in late 2019 and early 2020, virology and health security experts told PolitiFact’s Informed that they see nothing to suggest this is a harbinger of another pandemic crisis.
However, this warning may be important: Russian authorities are acting inconsistently with their public statements.
Despite the government’s official statement that the laboratory worker had unexplained pneumonia, Russia responded by placing 200 contacts under observation, isolating a hospital, and airlifting the top leader of disease control to Irkutsk.
“This is not the way to deal with common pneumonia, and it’s not the way to deal with common plague, which has been treatable with cheap antibiotics for decades,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.
However, even if the pathogen is not identified, the pattern of transmission is the most important factor to observe. “The potential for a pandemic manifests itself as growing chains of human-to-human transmission, but that’s not what we’re seeing,” he said.
Adalya said that nearly 200 people reported by the Moscow Times were under medical observation, but there was no cluster of serious illness.
Hayley Anne Severance, vice president of global biological policy and programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said she needed more information before providing a global health risk assessment.
“I’m still in ‘wait and see’ mode,” Severance said. “We need to know more about the lab test results, the treatments provided, her response to treatment, and any other potential exposure factors. We haven’t confirmed the pathogen or even the presence of an infectious agent, so we’re flying in the dark.”
Experts are watching Russian authorities and local media for reports of more cases
Currently, no secondary cases related to the death of the laboratory worker have been confirmed, approximately 10 days after the death of the researcher.
“If this is a rapidly spreading cluster, the window in which we would expect to see it has essentially passed,” Adalja told Well Informed on Oct. 8.
watch: Understanding pneumonic plague after death of Russian laboratory worker
Adalya said other concerns include expanding quarantine measures and Russian authorities turning away outside investigators or blocking the WHO team.
Severance said local media reports could also provide clues.
“I would be concerned if I started seeing reports from independent Russian news outlets that there were unreported cases or deaths in the region that have not been acknowledged or confirmed by official Russian sources,” she said.
Standard pneumonic plague is not a significant pandemic threat
Pneumonic plague occurs when someone inhales respiratory droplets containing Yersinia pestis, or when the bacteria that cause bubonic or septicemic plague spread to the lungs.
It can be treated with antibiotics. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if left untreated, pneumonic plague has a “case fatality rate close to 100%.”
It is the only plague that can be spread from person to person, usually through prolonged contact.
Measures such as masking can reduce the spread of disease. Severance said the incubation period for pneumonic plague is short, about one to four days, so it’s unlikely that an infected person could unknowingly spread the disease.
“In past outbreaks of pneumonic plague, on average each infected person spread the disease to one or two people,” Severance said, and infection rates dropped rapidly as quarantine measures were implemented.
Experts worry about message blocking
WHO officials said that based on available information, the risk of the disease that killed a Russian laboratory worker was “very low” for people outside Russia. But more answers are needed.
“A highly trained staff member at a plague institute died of unknown causes and we are relying on the claims of a government with a history of biosecurity cover-ups,” Adalja said.
Ian Jones, a professor of virology at Britain’s University of Reading, said it was “almost unbelievable” that scientists had not been able to determine the cause of the laboratory worker’s pneumonia, given modern testing capabilities.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged timely and transparent information sharing.
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