Russia denies the spread of pneumonic plague

Russia's public health watchdog has denied that a lab worker who died in Siberia had spread infection to another person.

This as global concerns swirled in recent days about suspected pneumonic plague.

Irkutsk Region Governor Igor Kobzev on Thursday sought to turn the page on the suspicious death of a worker at a plague research lab in Siberia,

saying quarantines and other preventive measures have been completed with no dangerous pathogens detected.

Russia's public health official website reported that rumours "of a second case in Irkutsk are false." And also stated the "lab worker at a plague research

institute in Irkutsk in southeastern Siberia died of pneumonia of unknown origin." And "extensive testing found no evidence her illness was caused by any

of the pathogens she worked with", and it informed the World Health Organization that no case of plague has been registered in the Irkutsk region.

David Engelthaler, executive director of the Arizona State University Health Observatory and professor said earlier this week he has experience

working with plague bacteria as part of monitoring the threat for the US government.

He said, "It's very rare to see pneumonic plague cases, but when we do, those are very serious and, and sometimes we have fatalities.

So we can get one every couple of years in the United States. But in this particular case, if this plague researcher got pneumonic plague,

it would likely because they inhaled or somehow got the plague bacteria in their lungs and then developed that mnemonic form. And so that's a very unusual transmission."