Washington: US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he has a call scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a possible case of plague after a woman worker at a Siberian research institute died last week.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he would be talking with Putin about the case “very soon.” Health authorities are investigating after the death of an employee at an anti-plague institute, which authorities attributed to pneumonia with an unknown cause.
Asked what the US intelligence community was saying about the case, Trump said the US is in “very deep discussions” on the topic. “We'll be able to report about it, probably tomorrow,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, Russia's health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said on Tuesday that no cases of plague had been detected among anyone who had come into contact with the Siberian plague institute laboratory worker who died, while locals said their lives had barely been disrupted.
Authorities say the 28-year-old woman died on Friday from pneumonia of an as-yet unestablished origin, in a case that has prompted international concern, including from US President Donald Trump.
Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement that no infectious diseases had been reported among the staff of the same plague research institute in Irkutsk over the past 10 days and that extensive testing had found no microorganisms in the deceased woman's body linked to her work.
"A comprehensive set of anti-epidemic measures was immediately organised and implemented in full in accordance with public health legislation," the watchdog said.
(With inputs from AP via PTI & Reuters)
