U.S. officials warned Russia that it was failing to comply with global health obligations by not sharing details about the death of a plague researcher in Siberia. The pressure from the Americans came in the form of a confidential diplomatic communication, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Following the death of 28-year-old lab worker Daria Shipilova, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for Moscow to release more details about what made her sick.
“We encourage Russia to be transparent and share more information with the world so that we can react accordingly and appropriately,” Rubio told reporters on Tuesday. “But we’re gonna have to make those decisions on the basis of the information that we’re learning and being provided, and so far that is still quite limited.”
The mysterious circumstances around the death has prompted Russian officials to quarantine a reported 200 people.
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President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has a call scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin “soon.”
The secrecy surrounding the potential infectious disease is the latest sore spot between the U.S. and Russia. Trump had said he’d negotiate an end to Putin’s war in Ukraine on the first day of his second term. Two years later, the fighting appears no closer to resolution. And while the president signed into law a sweeping Russia sanctions bill last month, his administration also faced backlash for inviting Putin to the G20 summit in Miami later this year.
“We haven’t ended Russia-Ukraine yet,” Trump said at a Tuesday event in Baltimore. “I’m working on that one, that one I thought would be the easiest one for me. But … that’s going to happen too pretty soon.”
When asked for comment, representatives for the White House and State Department referred The Washington Sun to Trump and Rubio’s comments.
A 2005 global health pact called the International Health Regulations requires countries that experience an event that could become an international public health emergency to notify the World Health Organization within 24 hours, provide updates and share lab results.
While Moscow has provided some information to WHO, The Wall Street Journal reported, it hasn’t provided detailed answers required by the agreement.
Russian authorities said Shipilova, who worked at Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, died suddenly of pneumonia earlier this month. With gaps in the information coming out of Russia, some public health officials worry her illness could have been caused by a deadly pathogen present in her lab work.
Russia has denied those claims.
Russia’s national public health agency told Russian media on Monday that after a comprehensive analysis of Shipilova’s body, they found “no microorganisms associated with the patient’s professional activities.” It added in a separate statement to the Russian News Agency that evidence of COVID-19 and a cold virus had been found among the people being quarantined.
The WHO has stated there’s a low risk that the disease that killed the lab worker would spread globally. Trump ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the international health organization upon his return to the White House, citing what he called the organization’s “mishandling” of the pandemic that began during his first term.
The U.S. Embassy in Russia on Tuesday warned Americans in the country of the increased health risk and said the American government would have limited ability to help citizens there.
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