Today in Focus: Should we be worried about a plague outbreak?

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0:43Hi, it's Maddie here. We have a bonus episode in the Science Weekly feed for you today. It's something I recorded with our sister podcast, Today in Focus, on what you need to know about the death of a lab worker in Russia with a suspected case of pneumonic plague. And make sure to subscribe to Today in Focus wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode. These are extremely dangerous pathogens. There are a huge amount of unanswered questions here. If she was working with this bacterium and there was an incident, why wasn't she treated promptly? And if she was treated promptly, why did she die?

1:22From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoth. A Russian laboratory worker has died of a suspected plague case in Siberia. Madeleine Finlay, you are co-host of our sister podcast, Science Weekly. Obviously, this is very alarming. What do we know about the circumstances of the case? The information we've officially received is quite limited. we know that this was a 28 year old laboratory technician daria shipilova she was working at the its cuts anti-plague institute in siberia right she fell ill and then a few days later sadly she died on the 2nd of october now so far officially we've been told that it was pneumonia of an unknown etiology right but according to local reports and independent media it appears as if she was infected with a bacterium called yersinia pestis now this causes plague and it seems as if she had pneumonic plague so you might have fever coughing up blood it's a really unpleasant disease And actually, if it's left untreated or is treated quite late, it's almost always fatal.

2:45Right. Well, that does sound worrying. I mean, I think all of us, when we hear the word plague, would think back to the Black Death in the 14th century that wiped out a huge part of the population. Are we talking about the same variety of plague here? So the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, that is the same bacterium that caused black death. But black death is a type of plague, bubonic plague. So there are three types. You've got bubonic plague, septicemic plague and pneumonic plague. And as I said, bubonic plague, that's the one we associate with the black death. The way that you become infected with that is that you're probably bitten by a flea or you come into contact with a small mammal that's infected.

3:30So that might be rats, marmots, things like that. Septicemic plague is the same. That's when you have the bacterium that infects your bloodstream. It's a systemic infection. Whereas pneumonic plague, that's airborne. So that's an infection of the lungs. And you can pick that up by breathing in the bacterium that's been expelled by a person or an animal that's infected. We're dealing with the Russian state here and you mentioned that information is limited. But what do we know about how many people she was in contact with? Because quarantine measures have been introduced in Siberia, right? Yes.

4:11So the authorities have said that they've brought in anti-epidemic measures. It looks as if there have been about 200 contacts that have been quarantined, particularly in the laboratory, in the facility that she was working in. But it also looks as if actually a hospital has been putting quarantine, the hospital that she sadly died in. So the reports from the ground make it clear that the Russian authorities are taking this very seriously, even if they haven't confirmed that it's plague. But of course, where she was working suggests that's exactly what it is. Yeah, I mean, it's bringing back memories of Wuhan and those very early cases in China of what we now know was the coronavirus.

4:55We know what happened next. Donald Trump has been speaking about this case. This is a president who at the height of the COVID pandemic famously suggested that COVID could be treated by injecting disinfectant, something that scientists roundly discredited. So I'm not sure how much confidence we can have in his medical credentials. But what has he said in terms of the assistance the US is willing to provide to Russia? Yes, I would say Donald Trump has consistently proven himself as somebody that you should not go to for medical advice. In this case, he said, quite funnily, I hate to see them having it.

5:40Yeah, when you're talking about the plague. it's it's it's not the most presidential way to put it um he did say that it was a rough disease he's certainly correct in that respect um he said that anyone who has it will help so that looks as if the u.s authorities are taking a keen interest in this frankly authorities around the world will be taking a keen interest in this. To put your mind at ease on that comparison with COVID, one thing that I will say is the fact that so many people have been quarantined. With pneumonic plague, you would expect to see symptoms within one to three days. It happens quite quickly and there haven't been any reports of secondary infections.

6:31And the fact that they are monitoring this there's medical monitoring going on they are likely to see cases when they emerge okay the fact that we haven't seen any emerge that's very that's very positive but authorities around the world will be looking at how Russia's responding right now yeah absolutely um I mean again when we think of the plague we think of the black death of something very much of the past but actually it is something that is still active in parts of the world isn't it which I was surprised to learn. Yeah so around the world every year there's a few hundred to maybe 2 ,000 cases.

7:10There are a few different hot spots so the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Peru but actually there are cases in western US, in central Asia and the reason for that is because there are zoonotic reservoirs. So animals come into contact, there's some spillover there. So you do see these emergencies of clusters of cases. But because we have antibiotics, generic antibiotics can treat plague, they usually don't go any further. That's why we don't see more widespread epidemics or pandemics. Yes, tell me more about that treatment, because I suppose a lot of people will be wondering how treatable this is, whether this has the capacity to spread in the way that COVID did.

7:58Obviously, much has changed in science since the 14th century. So we shouldn't have too much reason to be alarmed, it seems. Exactly. If this is treated promptly with antibiotics, people do tend to be able to recover from pneumonic plague. I mean, there is still a a 10 fatality rate so it's still extremely severe um there are vaccines but actually that the effectiveness of the vaccines isn't well proven and this takes us on to why a facility actually would would be keeping the bacterium yeah because because there are still uh cases around the world of plague research centers do want to understand this better they want to understand the disease, to be able to develop more effective treatments, to be able to develop better vaccines, and they will be doing that.

8:56So it's not surprising that a research facility would have Yersinia pestis. But Maddy, what's so strange is whenever you see footage of laboratories, I'm sure you have been in plenty in your career, the safeguards seem kind of as robust as it can be, you know, in terms of the professional equipment people are wearing and the safeguards in place. So how on earth did this happen? Yes, there are a huge amount of unanswered questions here. One of the theories that I've seen why this laboratory technician was infected was there was an accident, perhaps she dropped a test tube, something like that. I find personally that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

9:43And the reason is is that these laboratories will be under very very strong biosecurity measures these are extremely dangerous pathogens and so and they'll be very highly trained so if an incident was to occur there would be innumerable ways that they would respond to that there would should be lots of different protective measures layers that would stop somebody getting infected you know wearing PPE protective measures all kinds of laboratory equipment that means that it should not pass from the lab desk to the lab bench to to the person to the worker and if she was working with this bacterium and there was an incident why why wasn't she treated promptly and if she was treated promptly why did she die so so that there are a lot of questions left to answer I've seen another theory that perhaps she went out on a research trip and was exposed to an animal reservoir and became infected that way again lots of questions to be answered here because a facility like that that sort of incident it shouldn't happen it does in rare cases but you have to ask why did it happen?

11:05Yeah and I suppose one of the most worrying questions in addition to the very important questions you've already raised and that some people are speculating is that there could have been something more sinister going on that Russia was perhaps creating some sort of bioweapon. Is there any credibility to that? There is in the sense that Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that we've been talking about, it has a long history of being used as a bioweapon. So even in the 14th century, there were reports of armies catapulting victims of the plague over the walls to their enemies to try and infect them. So this goes back a long way.

11:49certainly the Soviet Union had a very big bioweapons program and they developed Yersinia pestis to be resistant to antibiotics that's well documented whether or not this facility was doing any of that kind of work certainly there are no reports that that's the case and as I said there's good reasons why a research institute would would have this bacterium But at the same time, I do think it is an important question that authorities will be looking into. Yeah, you can understand why people would be so concerned about this, given that, you know, you wouldn't want Russia of all nations to have a bioweapon in their possession.

12:35So let's hope very much that that's not the case. Maddy, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Madeleine Finlay, co-host of our sister podcast, Science Weekly. If you want more from Maddy, head over to Science Weekly, which you can also now find on YouTube for an episode on narcolepsy and why you might have been thinking about it all wrong. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today I'm focused. We'll be back in your feeds as usual tomorrow morning. The latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was produced by Angus Neal.

13:05The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch. And it was presented by me, Lucy Hoff.

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