Russia rails against online 'plague' claims, but few in Irkutsk trust authorities

Russia's health watchdog says fake information is circulating online about a mystery illness amid growing questions about the death of a woman in Siberia last week.

Rospotrebnadzor, the organisation providing updates on the situation, said the patient who died had been "diagnosed with pneumonia of an unknown aetiology".

Local media has claimed the woman was aged in her 20s and worked at the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East research facility in the eastern city of Irkutsk. They speculated her infection could have been linked to her job.

On Tuesday, local time, Rospotrebnadzor warned a document circulating online purporting to outline severe restrictions that were planned for the region was false.

"Currently, no such decisions have been made," the organisation said in a statement. It has previously said the "epidemiological situation" in Irkutsk and neighbouring Shelekhov was "stable".

As officials call for calm, some people in the region are growing increasingly concerned.

"People are not panicking here, but we don't trust the authorities and the information they are providing about the plague," one woman who has lived in Irkutsk for 15 years told the ABC.

"Everyone can see how the authorities have suddenly started to downplay this situation, following instructions from Moscow."

Not everyone in the city shares that scepticism.

"The bear attacks are much more serious than the plague," one man told the ABC, in reference to a spate of deaths this year caused by Russia's unofficial national symbol.

"Everything is fine here in Irkutsk. Some people are wearing masks. At one large company, masks are mandatory."

Unverified reports in local media claimed the woman who died had contracted the pneumonic plague — a lung infection caused by the same bacteria behind the Black Death — after breaking a test tube.

The governor of nearby Buryatia also announced on social media the woman had died "from the plague" but later edited his post to say "possibly".

Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement there was no evidence the plague was circulating in Irkutsk, and that testing had found no microorganisms in the dead woman's body linked to her work at the research centre.

"A comprehensive set of anti-epidemic measures was immediately organised and implemented in full in accordance with public health legislation," the watchdog said.

"This included identifying the widest possible circle of individuals who had been in contact with the patient and arranging for them to be placed under medical observation in hospital with daily laboratory tests."

US President Donald Trump has offered to help Russia with what he described as "a big problem".

Speaking in Iceland on Tuesday, local time, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Russia should "share more information" about the situation.

"We're watching it very closely, hour-by-hour," Mr Rubio said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is in contact with Russian authorities to "verify the event, its circumstances, the laboratory tests underway and their results", according to its spokesperson, Christian Lindmeier.

He said: "The WHO initial risk assessment from the information available estimates the risk to be moderate to low for Irkutsk, a low risk for the Russian Federation as a whole, and very low for the WHO European region."

Epidemiologists have pointed out Russia has been accused of developing biological weapons — something illegal under international law — and that the world needs more information about what happened in Siberia. Russia denies this.