Russian Agency Overseeing Infectious Disease Lab Says Worker’s Death Not Caused By Accident

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.

Several city hospitals have been placed under a three-week quarantine, including a children’s and maternity hospital, Baikal People said. The children’s hospital denied this information on its social media accounts on Oct. 4. The Irkutsk Regional Government press service stated Oct. 5 that hospitals are operating normally.

Kobzev’s statement that Shipilova died from a “particularly dangerous infection” echoes the language of the lab’s website, which describes its mission as working with “epidemic control for especially dangerous bacterial and virus infections.” It also studies cholera, brucellosis, tularemia, anthrax, arbovirus infections, the website states. The lab houses 1840 strains of plague, or Yersinia pestis.

Kremlin-aligned REN TV deleted five stories about the incident, Baikal People alleges. The Daily Caller News Foundation identified one broken link to a previously available REN TV news story.