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US President Donald Trump stated on Wednesday that they do not consider the apparent outbreak of pneumonic plague affecting the Russian region of Siberia to be a biological weapon and reiterated that Moscow claims to have the situation "totally under control."
Asked in the Oval Office about the possibility that the potential disease case is related to a biological agent, Trump replied: "We don't think so."
"We'll know soon, but we don't think so. And if you listen to them (Russia), they say it's under control," he added.
Regarding possible similarities to how China managed the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US leader warned that Beijing "didn't say much then, and Russia isn't saying much right now either, but they do claim they have it totally under control," he repeated.
Trump stated that he had a call scheduled with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, after having announced the day before that he would speak with the Kremlin chief about the apparent case of pneumonic plague in the Irkutsk area.
According to local Russian media, a 28-year-old woman—an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East—died last week at a hospital in Shelekhov, a satellite city of the regional capital.
So far, two versions are being studied: that the patient contracted pneumonic plague, caused by a bacterium called 'Yersinia pestis', in Thailand, where she recently returned from, or as a result of the accidental breaking of a test tube with pathogens at her workplace.
The US government issued an alert about this incident on Sunday, and since then, the independent Russian channel Liudi Baikala (People of Baikal) reported that Russian authorities have quarantined several hospitals in Irkutsk due to suspicions of a pneumonic plague outbreak.
The Trump administration has been in contact about this situation with its Russian counterparts, including health experts, since last Friday, confirmed a State Department official in a message sent to EFE.
[Publicidad]