Bacterium that causes plague, spread via fleas and rodent hosts; responsible for historical pandemics and studied through ancient DNA.
Russia quarantined about 200 contacts of a 28-year-old who died at an Irkutsk plague institute, but the cause of death remains unconfirmed. Devi Sridhar argues in a Guardian column that the case shows preparedness depends on transparency as much as laboratory skill.
Reality
Rospotrebnadzor ended its quarantine on 7 October and freed most of the nearly 200 people held over a lab worker's death, after tests found no dangerous pathogen. What killed 28-year-old Daria Shipilova, and why the response far exceeded plague protocol, remains unexplained.
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WHO and the US government are pressing Russia for epidemiological data after a researcher at an Irkutsk plague lab died, possibly of pneumonic plague. Biosecurity specialist Gregory Koblentz calls the epidemic risk minimal because antibiotics treat plague; what worries him is the secrecy.
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The World Health Organization is working with Russian authorities after an employee at a Siberian research institute died of suspected pneumonic plague. Its spokesperson says the cause of death is unconfirmed and testing is still underway.
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Russia's Irkutsk region put nearly 200 contacts under observation after a 28-year-old lab worker died of pneumonic plague, independent outlets report. Because the pathogen is treatable and spreads poorly, the open question is how the accident got past the lab's biosafety.
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Russian authorities put about 200 people under observation after a plague-lab technician died of what officials call pneumonia of unknown cause. The response is sized for plague, and how fast it unwinds as contacts test negative will say more than the edited statements.
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Radiocarbon can leave a medieval burial floating inside a century. A University of Tartu team used each plague genome's position on the evolutionary tree to tighten that window, and says many samples now line up with recorded outbreaks.
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A University of Tartu team sequenced Yersinia pestis from archaeological remains and built a way to narrow radiocarbon dates using a genome's place on the family tree, then matched samples to outbreaks chroniclers recorded.
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An international team sequenced Yersinia pestis from teeth at four Siberian cemeteries and found it in 18 of 46 people, among them siblings and parents who appear to have died in the same outbreak. The work is published in Nature.
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