Russian plague lab researcher was infected after simple mistake with test tube, local source claim now 3 hospitals are locked down

A Russian plague lab assistant may have accidentally broken a test tube containing a deadly  “Black Death” pathogen before being infected, a local report claimed.Now, up to 200 people are now believed to be under medical observation with three hospitals on lockdown.Daria Shipilova, 28, was working last week as a technician at the anti-plague laboratory in Irkutsk, eastern Siberia, which handles rare diseases, when she is believed to have mistakenly smashed the test tube containing the pneumonic plague, according to a report from the independent news outlet People of Baikal.She was admitted to a hospital in the nearby town of Shelekhov on Sept.29 with pneumonia symptoms and placed on a ventilator, but died two days later, the Moscow Times reported.A total of 189 people with whom Shipilova may have come into contact had been quarantined as of Saturday, including the other staff at the Anti-Plague Institute.Authorities in Irkutsk, a vast region north of Mongolia, held an emergency meeting over the weekend to discuss the “particularly dangerous infection” at the lab, the region’s governor Igor Kobzev said.Currently, no one else is showing signs of illness, Kobzev said.Details on the outbreak inside Russia, which has little free press, remain sparse.Separate reports claim the lab assistant became ill after returning from a work trip to the neighboring region of Buryatia, where a plague outbreak previously broke out, according to Russian tabloid Mash.Plague is often spread through the bites of infected fleas on rodents, including the Black Death, which killed between 75 and 200 million people globally in the 14th century, including between 30 and 60% of the entire population of Europe.The plague in this case is pneumonic plague, which can be spread person-to-person via infected breath....