President Donald Trump said Wednesday that U.S. officials do not believe the death of a Russian laboratory worker was connected to a bioweapon. Russian health authorities have said that they have found no evidence of plague among people exposed to the woman. “We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so,” Trump told reporters when asked whether the case could involve a bioweapon. The laboratory worker has been identified as 28-year-old Darya Shipilova. She worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East and died Friday after developing pneumonia of unknown origin.
The case has drawn international attention because of her work at a facility that studies plague and because Russian authorities quarantined or placed under medical observation roughly 200 people who may have had contact with her. Russia’s public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said Tuesday that no cases of plague had been detected among the woman’s contacts and that extensive testing had found no microorganisms in her body associated with the pathogens she worked with.
