Former CDC director warns Russian plague may have been “manipulated”

The former director of the Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) has questioned whether the Russian laboratory at the center of a possible plague death had modified the bacterial disease as world leaders demand answers over the case.

Robert Redfield, who led the agency at the start of the COVID pandemic, said he was concerned at Russia’s response to the death of Darya Shipilova, 28, who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia.

Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s health watchdog said that Shipilova died from “pneumonia of unknown aetiology” but unconfirmed reports she had accidentally broken a test tube containing the live bacteria that causes pneumonic plague prompted alarm.

“If she was working in a plague lab and had an accident, there would have been a protocol for her to go on antibiotics,” Redfield told NewsNation. “if the plague that she was working with had been manipulated to not be sensitive to antibiotics … that would explain why maybe they didn’t work.”

Around 200 people Shipilova came into contact with have been placed under observation, according to reports, and hospitals and a maternity unit in the region have also been quarantined.

The U.S., the European Union and the World Health Organization have all called on Russia for transparency over the case.

This is a developing story to be updated.