Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection assessed the public-health threat from a fatal case in Siberia as low and said residents need not worry excessively. A worker at an anti-plague research institute in Irkutsk Oblast died after severe pneumonia of unknown cause.
The Centre’s infectious-disease division head said the cause of the worker’s illness and death, and whether a pathogen was involved, had not been confirmed. He said Russian authorities had not announced the information.
The World Health Organization assessed that there was currently no evidence that the case involved sustained human-to-human transmission.
The Centre had contacted the World Health Organization and Russian authorities for information. It said it would stay in contact with the international agency and monitor developments.