Trump Announces Call with Putin
On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that a call is set with Russian President Vladimir Putin to talk over a potential plague case at a Siberian research facility. Trump said he would speak with Putin about the matter very soon. Asked what the US intelligence community was saying, he replied that Washington is in very deep discussions on the topic and that a report would probably come the next day.[S1]
On Monday, Trump expressed that the US would be open to assisting Russia with the situation, characterizing the disease as rough and noting that microbes had become stronger and smarter, akin to an army. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not provide an immediate response to a request for comment on Trump's statements.[S1][S2]
WHO and US Officials Respond
The World Health Organization (WHO) affirmed on Tuesday that the case poses a very low risk outside of Russia. The UN agency confirmed it was in communication with Russian authorities following reports of the death of Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old woman who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East. Russian health authorities identified the cause of her death as pneumonia of undetermined origin, and no cases of plague were found among her contacts, with only two cases of Covid and one of rhinovirus detected.[S1][S2]
A State Department official told NBC News on Tuesday that Washington had been in touch with Moscow about the incident since Friday, after Shipilova's death. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pressed Russia to release more details to the international community, while warning against rushing to judgment, noting how little information exists and calling speculation reckless. The CDC said it was aware of and tracking reports of the death, described as a suspected pneumonic plague case in the Irkutsk region, and said nothing suggests a wider threat to the United States.[S2]
Conflicting Reports and Sanctions Deadline
Russian officials denied that anti-plague measures had been put in place and played down accounts of an incident at the anti-plague institute located in Siberia's Irkutsk region. The Russian outlet People of Baikal reported on Friday that Shipilova might have caught pneumonic plague from a broken test tube, while other media raised the possibility that her death stemmed from a lab accident. People of Baikal further said as many as 200 people she may have contacted were quarantined.[S3]
Still, Russian authorities said the cause of death remains unconfirmed, and the health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor rejected claims in an online-circulating document that special measures had been ordered, saying the document and its information were not from official sources and were false. Postmortem testing by Russian officials found no trace of the disease. Irkutsk Regional Governor Igor Kobzev said Monday that a Rospotrebnadzor review determined the woman died of pneumonia of undetermined cause, with no work-related microorganisms in her biological samples, and that no other institute staff had sought medical care since.[S3]
