Russian lab worker’s death sparks plague fears as unverified claims spread online

The death of a 28-year-old Russian lab worker at Siberia’s Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute has sparked online panic about a ‘plague’, despite the WHO assessing the public health risk in Russia as low. Unverified claims about how she became ill, including a laboratory accident involving a test tube, are circulating online. Misleading posts and out-of-context videos have also fuelled speculation and fear. Vedika Bahl goes through them, and what we know, in Truth or Fake.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that it considers the public health risk in Russia to be “low”, and “very low” for Europe. But that has not stopped fears and misinformation from spreading on social media.

Russian media identified the woman as 28-year-old Daria Shipilova, a laboratory technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and Far East. The exact circumstances of her death remain unclear, although reports say she died two days after falling ill at work.

Several theories have emerged online about how she may have become sick. One claims she dropped a test tube containing live pathogens at the laboratory. Others suggest she fell ill following a field trip near the Mongolian border, or after travelling to Thailand.

There is currently no evidence supporting any of these theories, as they remain unconfirmed.

The governor of Russia’s Irkutsk region, citing the country’s health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, rejected the claim that Shipilova had been exposed to pathogens in a laboratory accident. He said microorganisms associated with work had not been detected in her samples, and that no disease-related cases had been reported among employees at the institute over the previous 10 days.

The head of the neighbouring Republic of Buryatia also addressed speculation that Shipilova had travelled there. In a post on Telegram, he said she had not visited the region and that the source of the infection was “unrelated” to Buryatia. The post was subsequently edited. It initially stated that the woman had died from plague, before being changed to say she had “possibly” died from plague.

WHO update fuels speculation

The lack of information surrounding the case has also fuelled claims about the World Health Organization.

Several posts on X claimed that the organisation had updated its plague fact sheet on the same day Shipilova was admitted to hospital, suggesting the two events were connected, but there is no evidence of such a link.

The WHO updated its plague information on September 29 as part of a broader news release titled “Latest global trends in cholera, meningitis and plague”. Information on all three diseases was updated as part of the release. The timing of the update therefore does not establish a connection between the WHO report and the laboratory worker's illness.

The source of some of the claims circulating online also warrants scrutiny.

One X account calling itself “Irkutsk Live” presents itself as providing live coverage from the Siberian city. However, the account is based in Australia, rather than Russia. The account also changed its name earlier this month. Although it was created in May, its first visible post dates from October 2. This makes it difficult to establish its previous identity or whether older posts were deleted.

Misleading videos stoking online panic

Other posts have used unrelated or out-of-context footage to suggest that Russia is taking emergency measures over a possible plague outbreak.

US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, for example, shared a post claiming that Russia had introduced mandatory temperature checks for passengers arriving in Moscow from Irkursk. The post received more than one million views.

But the flight shown in the post was not arriving from Irkursk, but from Thailand. Flight information we verified from the video shows it was a Bangkok-to-Moscow service, and the footage was posted online on October 4. The original poster also shared in the comments that they were indeed on that flight.

There was, however, some truth behind the claim about passenger screening. Both Russian and Thai media reported that passengers arriving from Thailand were subject to temperature checks amid a recent Covid-19 outbreak there. Therefore this video does not indicate that the measures were related to plague or to the death of the Russian laboratory worker.