The girl who died, whose first identify was given by Russian media as Daria and who was in her late twenties, had lately visited the Buryatia area on the border with Mongolia.
The plague bacterium or Yersinia pestis, exterior, which killed up to half the population of Europe in the 14th Century when it was recognized as the Black Death, is discovered among rodents such as marmots in the space.
It was in response to an outbreak in the Twenties that the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East, exterior was based just over 100 years in the past.
Dr Simon Clarke, an affiliate professor in mobile microbiology at the University of Reading, instructed BBC Radio 4’s PM programme that the pneumonic model of Yersinia pestis was almost always deadly if left untreated, but could be overcome with antibiotics.
“Pneumonic plague can transmit from person to person and that is why there is the concern around this,” he said.
He added: “But of course people’s thought with any outbreak of infectious disease at all runs to… lockdowns and Covid and that is just not what’s going to happen here.”
“People think, ‘Oh the plague, that’s gone, that went hundreds of years ago,’ but it hasn’t,” Clarke said.
“It’s still around and in certain parts of the world, it’s a threat to human health and that’s why they need to study it.”
Asked if the pathogen might have been studied for potential use as a bio-weapon, the scientist agreed it was attainable.
“Because this is Russia people’s thoughts are running to that, but I think my earlier explanation is probably more likely,” Clarke said.
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