Rospotrebnadzor said no illness had been found among contacts of a laboratory worker in Siberia whose death it attributes to community-acquired pneumonia, after reports of a second case.
Russia's consumer-health watchdog denied reports that a second person had fallen ill after contact with an employee of an anti-plague laboratory whose death has drawn international attention. Bloomberg reported the denial on Thursday.
Rospotrebnadzor told Interfax that no illness had been detected among people who were in contact with the laboratory worker. The agency described the worker's death as community-acquired pneumonia. The comments answered speculation on social media that another case had occurred.
Bloomberg said the denial came as scrutiny of the laboratory continued. It published a photograph of an anti-plague laboratory in Irkutsk taken on 7 October. The agency did not, in the account used here, release a full clinical file or name the worker.
The watchdog's statement is a denial of a second detected illness among contacts, not an independent laboratory confirmation published by another government. Social posts suggesting a second case were the prompt for the denial, not evidence accepted by the agency.
No World Health Organization case count was included in the Bloomberg report used for this item.
People Sentiments Negative
- Rospotrebnadzor said no illness had been detected among the laboratory worker's contacts.