Speaking to the press regarding the epidemiological situation in Russia’s Irkutsk Region, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov demanded that journalists “stick to the official statements,” the state-owned news agency TASS reported earlier today. On Oct. 4, TASS had described the situation in the region as “stable,” assuring readers that an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East had died not of plague but of “pneumonia of unknown etiology.” Amid these official statements, Russian media have been deleting reports of suspected plague in the Irkutsk Region, while Central Asian countries — Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan — have tightened sanitary controls at the border.
At a briefing for journalists on Oct. 5, Peskov urged participants “to ignore various rumors and speculation” about plague in the Irkutsk Region and instead rely on official statements from the consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor:
“We have Rospotrebnadzor, where top professionals in this field work — let’s listen to their official statements.”
A few hours earlier, the Russian business outlet Kommersant had cited Axios, writing that the Trump administration was monitoring reports of a possible plague outbreak in Russia. Twenty-five minutes later, the Telegram post and the news item on the Kommersant website were deleted.
In recent days, the REN TV federal network deleted all five of its posts about plague in the Irkutsk Region, as was noted by the independent outlet Lyudi Baikala. Two of them had already been indexed by the TGStat service.
One of the stories reported that Darya Shipilova, a laboratory technician at the Anti-Plague Institute in Irkutsk, had worked with strains of the plague pathogen and studied the body’s immune response to the infection. Another post, citing a source, reported that a patient suspected of having plague had died at a district hospital in the Irkutsk Region.
Rospotrebnadzor denies there is an outbreak in the region. On Oct. 4, the agency said Shipilova had died of “pneumonia of an undetermined type” and assured the public that “the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk Region and the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov is stable.”
Public officials, too, have been deleting or editing statements about the plague. In a Telegram post dated Oct. 3, Baikalsk authorities asked residents to temporarily avoid traveling to Shelekhov and nearby towns because of “unofficial information about a confirmed case of plague infection in a person.” The post was available for almost two hours.
In addition, on Oct. 2 Buryatia Governor Alexey Tsydenov stated on the state-backed messenger Max that a woman in the Irkutsk Region “had died of plague.” He later edited the message, adding the word “possibly.” On his Telegram channel, Tsydenov published the already-edited post with the softened wording.
Despite official statements, hospitals in Irkutsk have begun introducing quarantine measures, as The Insider wrote on Oct. 4. On Oct. 5, the spread of quarantine measures continued. Lyudi Baikala reported, citing hospital patients, that restrictions had been introduced at the Irkutsk Regional Psychoneurological Dispensary.
Amid reports of a plague outbreak in the Irkutsk Region, Central Asian countries have begun tightening sanitary controls at their border with Russia, and Uzbekistan has introduced similar measures despite the fact that it does not share a land border with Russia. Enhanced sanitary and quarantine controls were also introduced by Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
This past spring saw reports that Russian authorities had attempted to conceal an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the country. Officials had announced an outbreak of pasteurellosis and rabies among cattle amid quarantine measures and the mass culling of animals. Additionally, authorities had imposed bans on moving livestock and exporting livestock products from several regions. However, many experts and farmers pointed out that pasteurellosis is a relatively straightforward infection that is treated with antibiotics — combating it does not require the mass killing of animals. Moreover, the government applied a five-kilometer radius for the slaughter of all susceptible livestock, as is prescribed in cases of foot-and-mouth disease.