The White House Issued A Statement Regarding The Plague Outbreak In Russia

• 5.10.2026, 7:33

In Russia, authorities are ignoring the incident and deleting all posts about it.

The White House is monitoring reports regarding a suspected case of the plague and related quarantine measures in Russia. A White House spokesperson told Axios by a spokesperson for Donald Trump’s administration.

According to the official, the administration “is aware of the situation, is monitoring the outbreak, and is evaluating possible courses of action.”

Following the death of Daria Shipilova, an employee of the Anti-Plague Research Institute in the Irkutsk Region, authorities imposed a quarantine on several medical facilities in the region and placed nearly 200 people who had come into contact with her under medical observation. However, a plague infection has not been officially confirmed, and Russian authorities have made almost no comments regarding the incident.

According to the publication “People of Lake Baikal,” the governor of the Irkutsk Region Igor Kobzev mentioned Shipilova’s death only in the second part of his roundup of the week’s top events: after reports of bear attacks and flu vaccines. He cited data from Rospotrebnadzor, which had previously stated that Shipilova died of “pneumonia of unknown etiology.”

Meanwhile, according to Astra, official media outlets and authorities are removing reports about the plague. According to the channel, a post by the Baikalsk administration asking people not to visit the city of Shelekhov remained online for about two hours, while the Telegram channel of the pro-Kremlin REN TV deleted all five posts about the spread of the plague.