Panic Has Swept Through The Irkutsk Region Of The Russian Federation
- 2.10.2026, 19:28
The governor of neighboring Buryatia commented on the situation in the region.
The governor of Buryatia Alexey Tsydenov confirmed earlier reports that a resident of the neighboring Irkutsk Region died after contracting the plague, according to The Moscow Times.
“According to Rospotrebnadzor, as well as data from the government of the Republic of Buryatia, the woman who died of the plague in the Irkutsk Region had not visited Buryatia,” he wrote on his VKontakte page.
Tsydanov thus refuted reports that outbreaks of the disease had occurred within the republic. According to him, the source of the infection stems from “other circumstances” unrelated to the region. Earlier, Mash reported that a 27-year-old employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute had died after contracting “pneumonic plague.”
According to one version cited by Mash, the researcher had returned from a work trip to Buryatia, where an outbreak of plague had been reported on the border with Mongolia. This is the first time in the last ten years that the disease has reached the region, Mash wrote.
Tsydanov, for his part, denies that there are plague outbreaks in Buryatia, including along the border. According to another account, the woman accidentally broke a test tube containing the dangerous bacteria in the laboratory while collecting biological material for diagnostic purposes. Last Tuesday, she was admitted to the Shelekhov Hospital with symptoms of pneumonia and placed on a ventilator, but the researcher died two days later. Hospital staff were quarantined, and the facility itself was closed. According to her colleagues, the young woman had been working in Transbaikalia with animals infected with the plague.
According to REN TV, the deceased was 27-year-old lab technician Daria Shipilova. She researched the plague bacillus from natural foci in Siberia, Mongolia, and Altai and studied the body’s immune response to the infection. One of the scientific papers in which the researcher was involved described experiments on hundreds of white mice. Among other things, the study examined immune responses to infection with the most pathogenic strain of the plague, the TV channel reported. Scientists sought to determine how many test subjects would survive the infection and also recorded changes in the thymus, spleen, and immune system.
In late March, Shipilova participated in the All-Russian Congress on Infectious Diseases in Moscow, where, together with her colleagues, she presented a paper titled “Study of the Sensitivity of Yersinia pestis from Natural Foci in Siberia to Antibacterial Drugs,” reports “Ostrozhno, Novosti.” According to the channel, in late August, the young woman took part in international exercises for rapid-response teams to sanitary and epidemiological emergencies in Saratov.
Meanwhile, in the Irkutsk Region, 189 people were hospitalized with suspected plague infection; all of them had been in contact with Shipilova, a source told REN TV. The patients were admitted to two hospitals, and 12 people were sent to the Anti-Plague Institute for observation. Governor Igor Kobzev held an emergency meeting of the Sanitary and Anti-Epidemic Commission with the participation of Rospotrebnadzor head Anna Popova, where they discussed information regarding a regional resident’s infection with an “extremely dangerous infection.”