President Donald Trump said Tuesday he planned a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss pneumonic plague, after the death of a worker at a Russian plague laboratory sparked public health fears around the world.
Asked if he had spoken with Putin about the issue, Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House that he had a “scheduled call” and that it would take place “very soon.”
The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks.
Trump told reporters Monday that he was ready to help Russia, calling the pneumonic plague a “serious disease.”
“I hate to see them suffer,” Trump said. “Anyone who has this kind of problem, we are always ready to help.”
A Russian health watchdog said last week that an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute in Siberia and the Far East had died of “pneumonia of undetermined origin.”
The woman’s mother spoke to Russian media, who identified her as Daria Shipilova.
The watchdog concluded that plague had not been found so far among staff contacts tested, saying only that they had found two cases of Covid and two of rhinovirus.
A State Department official told NBC News on Tuesday that the United States was in contact with the Russian government about the incident as early as Friday, following reports of Shipilova’s death.
It “is incumbent on Russia to obviously share more information with the world,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday.
“Maybe, you know, there’s nothing there. Maybe it’s bigger than we thought. We don’t know,” Rubio told reporters at a news conference in Iceland. “But I think it would be unwise at this time, given the limited information we still have, to speculate on what that might or might not be, or what that is or what that is not.”
The U.S. Embassy in Russia issued a health alert Tuesday, saying it was monitoring the situation closely and urging Americans in the Irkutsk region to follow the guidelines of local health authorities, avoid affected establishments and seek prompt medical attention if they develop a fever or respiratory symptoms.
“The U.S. government has limited capacity to assist U.S. citizens in Russia, particularly outside of Moscow,” the embassy said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday it was aware of and monitoring reports of the death, which it called a “suspected case of pneumonic plague in the Irkutsk region of Russia.”
“At this time, there is no indication of a broader threat to the United States, but the CDC and our interagency partners are prepared and will continue to monitor the situation closely,” the CDC wrote on X.
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