The State Department sent a demarche to Moscow requesting additional information regarding a purported plague outbreak in the Siberian oblast of Irkutsk.

Last week, 28-year-old Russian lab technician Daria Shipilova died two days after being hospitalized, with what has now been identified by Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s public health and consumer protection agency, as “pneumonia of unknown etiology.” She worked in Russia’s Anti-Plague Institute, leading to initial fears that her death was connected to a lab leak. Over 200 of her close contacts were quarantined, but they have nearly all since been released after daily tests found no others were infected.