A woman has died of pneumonic plague in the Irkutsk region of eastern Siberia. A regional official announced this, while a Russian media outlet reports that dozens of people have been quarantined. Local media identified the woman as Daria Chipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician. The Russian newspaper “Peoples of Baikal” reported that he worked for the Irkutsk anti-plague institute and could have contracted pneumonic plague due to a broken test tube.
Silence from the Russian Ministry of Health
The fact is that up to two hundred people with whom he might have been in contact have been quarantined, the Russian newspaper added, without providing further details. The Russian Ministry of Health, meanwhile, has not released any statement on the matter. Alexei Tsydenov, the governor of Russia’s Buryatia region, said in a social media post that a woman in the nearby Irkutsk region had “died from the plague.”
Transmission and development of the disease
Pneumonic plague is highly contagious and can be fatal if not treated quickly, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Plague is an infectious disease of bacterial origin that is still widespread in many parts of the world, including in some regions of industrialized countries. It is caused by the “yersinia pestis” bacterium, which normally hosts parasitic fleas of rodents, rats, some species of squirrels and prairie dogs. In some cases, fleas can also infect pets such as cats.
Normally, the yersinia bacterium circulates among these species without causing high mortality rates, and therefore these animals are essentially long-term infectious reservoirs. Occasionally, an epidemic can also kill large numbers of rodents, and fleas, in search of new hosts, also transmit to humans, spreading the disease.
In the case of pneumonic plague, the bacterium infects the lungs, explain experts from the Higher Institute of Health (ISS). This form of the disease can be transmitted from person to person through the air or aerosols of infected people and therefore constitutes one of the most dangerous forms due to the epidemic potential that characterizes it. The pulmonary form can also result from the degeneration of the other forms if they are not treated promptly.
Symptoms and incubation
Plague should be suspected following the manifestation of the first symptoms, especially in the presence of a bubo, and a possible history of exposure to rodents or fleas. Buboes usually appear two to six days after exposure, and the disease progresses rapidly, eventually degenerating into pneumonic and septicemic forms if not treated promptly. The incubation of the primary pulmonary form, however, lasts from one to three days and is characterized by acute pneumonia with coughing and spitting up blood. The death rate in patients with pneumonic plague is 50%.
Pneumonic plague manifests itself with fevers, headaches, weakness, and a rapid development of pneumonia, with its characteristic signs: shortness of breath, chest pain, cough. If treatment is not rapid, the patient can die within a few days. To reduce the chance of death it is essential to treat with antibiotics within the first 24 hours of the onset of symptoms, with streptomycin, gentamicin, tetracyclines or chloramphenicol.
Treatment with antibiotics is recommended, according to the American CDC (the United States federal public health agency), for seven days even in people who potentially come into contact with the patient, to prevent the onset of the disease.