The Trump administration says it’s monitoring reports of the suspected plague in Russia and plans to screen the trickle of travelers arriving from the affected region.
The Department of Health and Human Services said only about 200 travelers arrive in the U.S. each year from Irkutsk Oblast, the Siberian province where a 28-year-old plague-lab worker died of a pneumonia-type disease.
The travelers must arrive at designated airports. Personnel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are “already positioned and prepared to identify potential health concerns, conduct public health assessments, and take appropriate action when warranted,” HHS said in a written statement on Wednesday.
People were interested in these podcasts
“CDC has longstanding systems and trained personnel in place to detect and respond to potential public health risks at U.S. ports of entry,” the department said. “We will continue to monitor the situation closely and adjust our public health response as conditions warrant.”
Irkutsk is part of Siberia, a remote part of central and eastern Russia, and travel from there to the U.S. dropped after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Daria Shipilova, the woman who died Friday in Russia, worked at the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute, raising fears of a lab incident. Other reports said she might have contracted a pneumonia-like condition on a work trip near the Mongolian border.
Russian authorities denied any confirmed plague cases and said the woman had been “diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown etiology.”
The World Health Organization is demanding more information from Russian authorities, including her lab tests and details about the health condition of her possible contacts.
The plague, often spread by rodents and their fleas, is a bacterial disease commonly associated with mass deaths in the Middle Ages.
It’s treatable if caught early and takes various forms, such as bubonic infections through the skin and into lymph nodes, septicemic infections in the bloodstream and tissue, and pneumonic forms that enter the lungs.
The CDC said a public health assessment at U.S. airports would include questions about an arriving passenger’s travel and activities and potential exposure to sick people, plus a basic health screening.
Travelers who don’t present a public health concern are generally cleared to continue to their destination, according to the agency.
The procedure, as outlined, evokes the response to the West African Ebola outbreak of 2013-16, when passengers were funneled to certain airports for screening.
Airports also screened passengers from certain countries during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The coronavirus nightmare looms over the suspected plague incident in Russia, particularly given the potential link to a pathogen lab. COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan, China, which is home to a major virology institute.
“If you listen to Russia, it’s under control. People have said that before about other things,” President Trump said Wednesday in the Oval Office. “China didn’t say much, and Russia isn’t saying much either, but they do say they have it very much under control.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.