The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that Russian authorities have identified all of the people in contact with a laboratory worker at a plague research institute in Siberia who died of unknown causes.
"All of the patients' contacts have been reportedly identified and are being monitored for illness, and none to date have shown symptoms of illness," said WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier.
He said Russian authorities, who have yet to officially respond to a WHO request for information, are investigating whether pneumonic plague caused her death in Siberia's Irkutsk region.
He deemed the public health risk in Russia to be low.
"The WHO initial risk assessment from the information available estimates the risk to be moderate to low for Irkutsk, a low risk for the Russian Federation as a whole, and very low for the WHO European region," Lindmeier told a press briefing.
Russia's consumer and health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor insisted Tuesday that a document circulating online indicating heightened sanitary-epidemiological measures and restrictions in the Irkutsk region was fake.
"We wish to clarify that the document and information in question do not originate from official sources and are untrue," it said on Telegram.
"No such decisions have been made at this time," it said, stressing that "the sanitary-epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk Region ... remains stable.”
