Worker’s Sudden Death Not Caused By Accident At Infectious Disease Lab, Russian Agency Claims
Anna Popova, the head of Russia's national public health agency, arrived from Moscow to the city of Irkutsk near the Mongolian border on Saturday to meet with local officials about the death of twenty-eight year old Daria Shipilova, an employee of an infectious diseases lab there, according to several reports.
Anna Popova, the head of Russia’s national public health agency, arrived from Moscow to the city of Irkutsk near the Mongolian border on Saturday to meet with local officials about the death of twenty-eight year old Daria Shipilova, an employee of an infectious diseases lab there, according to several reports.
By Sunday, Popova’s agency, the Russian Federal Service for Customers’ Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing or “Rospotrebnadzor,” issued a statement describing the cause of death only as a “pneumonia of undetermined etiology,” asserting that tests had detected no pathogens linked to her work, and that no emergency had occurred at her lab.
But the same agency, Rospotrebnadzor, oversees the Irkutsk lab where Shipilova worked, according to a 2013 biodefense paper about the structure of the Russian Federation’s network of anti-plague labs.
The governor of a territory near the Russia-Mongolia border announced the death of a young laboratory worker due to a “particularly dangerous infection.”
Shipilova was hospitalized last Tuesday and died by Thursday, according to a Moscow Times report, which is not state-affiliated.
Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev is appearing to maintain calm after the meeting Saturday, posting on his social media page over the weekend about the autumn weather, the opening of a new gym and a fish festival, according to a post on Telegram by local news outlet Baikal People. Kobzev has said the situation is stable.