A woman has reportedly died of plague in the remote Siberian region of Irkutsk, a regional official announced, while a Russian news outlet reported that dozens of people have been quarantined, according to AFP.

Local media identified her as Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician. The People of Baikal newspaper reported that the woman worked at the Anti-Plague Institute in Irkutsk and may have contracted pneumonic plague from a broken test tube.

Up to 200 people with whom she may have had contact have been quarantined, the newspaper added, without providing further details. Alexei Tsydenov, governor of Russia's Buryatia region, also posted on social media that a woman in the neighboring Irkutsk region had "died of plague."

"The sanitary situation in the Irkutsk region, and in particular in the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov, is stable," Russian authorities, particularly Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection, said following reports of an unspecified "illness" diagnosed in an employee of the Siberian research institute.

For their part, both the European Union and the United States have confirmed that they are "closely monitoring what is happening." "Plague is an infectious disease that can be caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It is treatable with antibiotics and has been absent from Europe for over 50 years, but it continues to appear sporadically in the Americas, Africa, and Asia," a European Commission spokesperson noted. Adding: "Health

Public health is always a priority for us. That's why we're in contact with our experts at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and are monitoring what's happening very closely."

(Unioneonline)

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