2026-10-07
13 分钟This is The Guardian.
These are extremely dangerous pathogens.
There are a huge amount of unanswered questions here.
If she was working with this bacterium and there was an incident, why wasn't she treated promptly?
And if she was treated promptly, why did she die?
From The Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoth.
A Russian laboratory worker has died of a suspected plague case in Siberia.
Madeleine Finlay, you are co-host of our sister podcast, Science Weekly.
Obviously, this is very alarming.
What do we know about the circumstances of the case?
The information we've officially received is quite limited.
We know that this was a 28-year-old laboratory technician, Daria Shipilova.
She was working at the Itskuts Anti-Plague Institute in Siberia.
Right.
She fell ill and then a few days later, sadly, she died on the 2nd of October.
Now, so far officially, we've been told that it was pneumonia of an unknown etiology.
But according to local reports and independent media,
it appears as if she was infected with a bacterium called Yersinia pestis.
Now, this causes plague and it seems as if she had pneumonic plague.
So you might have fever, coughing up blood.