At least one worker — and possibly two — at a Russian plague laboratory in Siberia has died within 24 hours of exposure, according to disclosures that so far have revealed little about the circumstances. The death has been reportedly linked to some form of pneumonic plague.

The case arrives amid continuing disputes over Covid-19, including the campaign by Republican senators and President Donald Trump to find grounds to prosecute virologist Anthony Fauci for his role in directing the Covid response. Critics had repeatedly suggested that a lab leak of the sort now reported in Siberia caused the escape of the Covid menace, alongside late recognition of a public contagion and presidential dismissals by Trump of the seriousness of a pandemic that ultimately shut the country. In the current case, undisputed reports indicate that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. approved funding for research at the very lab into diseases among foxes — a parallel to Fauci's investment in trying to understand species-crossing contagion.

What Has Been Disclosed

All that has been formally disclosed so far is that a 28-year-old woman working at a Russian plague lab was exposed to "some sort of plague" and died within 48 hours. There may have been a second death. Russian authorities are reportedly monitoring and quarantining the people with whom the woman came into contact, and her death has been reportedly linked to some form of pneumonic plague.

U.S. Response

Trump said last week that U.S. officials did not believe the Russian lab worker's reported death was linked to a bioweapon or biological weapons research. "We're going to find out soon enough, but we don't think so," Trump told reporters, adding that he was planning a call soon with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over the matter.

Trump said Russian officials had reassured their U.S. counterparts that the situation was being contained. The president acknowledged some similarities to how Chinese officials in early 2020 initially claimed they had contained the Covid-19 virus before it caused a global pandemic.

World Health Organization officials — Trump has cut ties between the U.S. and the WHO said they still do not know what pathogen caused the first worker's fatal illness, which pathogens Russian laboratories tested for, or why authorities placed roughly 200 contacts under quarantine or medical observation. Without those answers, officials said, they cannot fully assess the public health risk.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it has established measures to "identify and assess" any travelers from the Russian region where a possible plague case was reported, counting on halting travelers who rarely come directly from Siberia to the U.S. but rather pass through intermediate international stops, including Istanbul. The CDC said only 200 travelers from the region arrive in the U.S. each year.

The White House has shut down its pandemic response units, fearing association with Covid shutdowns as politically toxic.

One Russian news report, published by Baikal Journal, said the technician "allegedly broke a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen" on Sept. 25, then soon fell ill and died in a local hospital.

Pneumonic plague is almost always fatal when untreated, but many patients recover with a prompt course of antibiotics. The incubation period for this type of plague is up to six or seven days. Unlike the more familiar bubonic form, which is spread by fleas, pneumonic plague attacks the lungs and can pass directly from person to person through respiratory droplets — the reason health authorities quarantine close contacts of a case rather than rely on insect control. Kennedy, for his part, has canceled much of the CDC's ability to track communicable disease and issue warnings.

The Kennedy Research

According to an investigation by the animal testing watchdog White Coat Waste, which claims it was the first to raise questions about Covid escaping the Chinese lab thought to be a possible origin of the virus, Kennedy has overseen nearly $800,000 in federal funding for a research project involving a Russian laboratory with ties to the Siberian facility at the center of a suspected plague outbreak. The findings were reported by Mediaite.

The disclosure is notable in its own right, and more directly because it parallels the exact arguments that selected Republican senators and the administration have pursued against Fauci.

The National Institutes of Health awarded $779,689 to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2025 and 2026 for research conducted in partnership with Russia's state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics. Federal records obtained by the group and reported on Wednesday show that the project received $389,943 in July 2025 and another $389,746 in September 2026.

The NIH-funded research examines the genetic underpinnings of social behavior using foxes raised at a Siberian breeding facility. According to documents, Russian researchers euthanize the animals and transport biological samples to the United States for analysis.

In 2022, President Joe Biden's administration ordered a winddown of federally supported scientific partnerships with Russian government institutions following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. The 2025 and 2026 awards postdate that directive, and the available reporting does not say whether the payments were reviewed under it.

About the author: Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, as Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and in leadership roles at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team was part of several Pulitzers in New York.

This article is based on reporting originally published by Alternet.