Russian Anti-Plague Lab Worker Dies of Pneumonia, Raising Questions About Pneumonic Plague

Key facts

• Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old lab technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, died of pneumonia last week.
• Conflicting reports suggest she may have contracted pneumonia from a broken test tube containing plague samples or from a trip to Thailand.
• Dozens of people have been quarantined in Siberia, but the WHO stated on October 6 that none of Shipilova's close contacts tested positive for plague.
• Pneumonic plague is caused by Yersinia pestis, is the most serious form of plague, and is the only one that can spread person-to-person.
• Symptoms of pneumonic plague include fever, headache, weakness, and quickly developing pneumonia; it can be fatal within 18 to 24 hours if untreated.
• Treatment requires a roughly two-week course of antibiotics; without treatment, the death rate is almost 100 percent.
• The Black Death killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe between 1347 and 1351.
• About seven cases of plague are reported annually in the United States, mostly in the Southwest.