What is pneumonic plague? Boston doctor says it does not have the same pandemic potential as COVID-19

The U.S. government is monitoring reports that a laboratory worker in Russia died from the pneumonic plague.

According to local media reports, a 28-year-old female lab technician at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia, in the town of Shelekhov, died after being diagnosed with pneumonia of "unknown" origin, according to Russian officials.

Local media is now reporting that dozens of people in the area are in isolation.

"I don't think it's cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause to just keep an eye on it," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday.

Pneumonic plague is caused by a bacterium and spread through respiratory droplets passed from human to human, Elyse Fritschel, the director of infection prevention at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told WBZ-TV.  The onset of symptoms can be swift, as little as 24 hours.

"Shortness of breath, chest pain, cough and bloody sputum," Fritschel said.

The disease can also be deadly if not treated promptly using an antibiotic. Antibiotics can also be given prophylactically to anyone who came in contact with an individual carrying the disease, Fritschel said.

"At this point in time, we don't have enough information to say that this is something to worry about," Fritschel said. 

Fritschel says pneumonic plague does not have the same pandemic potential as other diseases, such as COVID-19.

"You're not typically spreading the illness before you get symptoms in the way that you can for things like covid," she said.

Even if a potential outbreak is contained, experts say the news highlights concern over the lack of oversight for labs around the world. 

"What we have are scientists everywhere in their own institutes, deciding for themselves what the risks are and what the biosafety precautions are and we just absolutely cannot do that," molecular biologist Dr. Alina Chan told WBZ-TV's Paula Ebben in 2025.

Chan called for additional oversight of labs after raising the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, sparking a global pandemic.

Other experts say there is reason to distrust information coming out of Russia. The Russian government has sought to downplay reports that the lab worker's death was linked to the pneumonic plague.

"Until and unless certified international labs get a sample of the virus or bacteria that is causing the outbreak, there's not likely to be significant trust in what local and even federal authorities in Russia are saying," said professor Mikhail Troitskiy, the assistant director of the Russia and Eurasia program for Tufts' Fletcher School.