Medical authorities in the Siberian city of Irkutsk have denied social media reports that multiple hospitals were placed under a three week quarantine because of a plague outbreak.
Rumors circulating online claimed that four medical facilities, including a children's hospital, had been shut down and that officials were hiding the spread of the disease. Regional medical institutions are continuing to operate normally.
Irkutsk is a major administrative and scientific center located near Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia. The region is home to the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute, a specialized research facility. Such institutes in Russia are part of a federal network of laboratories established to monitor and prevent outbreaks of highly infectious pathogens.
Representatives for the Ivano-Matreninskaya Children's Clinical Hospital said the facility was operating on its standard schedule without any changes. Emergency patients are being accepted at all hours in the trauma center, emergency department and specialized units for ophthalmology, maxillofacial surgery and ear, nose and throat care.
The children's hospital said scheduled patient appointments were continuing as planned and urged the public to ignore false information from unverified sources.
Irkutsk City Clinical Hospital Number 1 also issued a statement on its social media channel to address the rumors. Officials at the facility said claims about mass hospital closures and an outbreak of pneumonic plague in the region were entirely false.
Origins of the outbreak rumors
Pneumonic plague is a severe respiratory infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, and it is the only form of plague that can spread directly from person to person through the air.
The hospital noted that there have been no officially registered cases of pneumonic plague in Irkutsk. Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian federal agency responsible for public health and epidemiological surveillance, has not confirmed any infections.
Medical officials said the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the city remains stable and under control. City Clinical Hospitals Number 3 and Number 10 have similarly not reported any changes to their operational status.
The false reports about a plague outbreak began to spread online following the death of a female employee at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute. Early social media posts alleged that the tragedy was the result of the woman contracting the disease while at work.
Institute investigation findings
Rospotrebnadzor rejected those claims, stating that the cause of the employee's death was pneumonia of an unknown origin. The public health agency said laboratory tests did not detect any microorganisms related to her professional work.
Officials from the public health agency also denied previous rumors that there had been an accident within the walls of the research institute.
A close friend and former colleague of the deceased woman said that no laboratory accident involving her had taken place.
The former colleague noted that a commission tasked with investigating the circumstances of the incident found no evidence of an accident at the facility. The source added that investigators also found no violations in the institute's documentation.
The false claims regarding mass hospital closures have not been picked up by mainstream Russian media outlets. The Russian fact checking organization Lapsha Media assisted in verifying the rumors as false.
