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Darya Shipilova, 28, was exposed to pneumonic plague after breaking a test tube, resulting in hundreds of people being placed into quarantine.
Dr Chris Smith, consultant virologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, told LBC that the facility "may well have been weaponising this particular form of the plague."
"It may have been doing it for nefarious reasons", he told LBC's Breakfast with Nick Ferrari.
He added that while the plague is not currently present in the UK, the disease has not disappeared completely, with around 1,000 cases reported worldwide each year.
Andrew Marr speaks to Professor Philip Davies Director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies to get the facts.
00:00 | Donald Trump's statement on the matter
00:52 | The WHOs statement on the matter
01:50 | Andrew speaks to Professor Philip Davies
#andrewmarr #plague #russia #pandemic #outbreak #who #disease #worldnews #lbc
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0:00
I want to turn next to another story which is making many people around the world feel increasingly anxious about Russia
0:05
It's the one about the release of a pneumonic plague pathogen from a laboratory which apparently used to be used to research biological weapons
0:13
I have not spoken to them about it by hand. The pneumonia plague. What's your level of concern
0:18
Well, I hate to see them having it. It's a rough disease
0:23
You know, that's a disease we used to be able to control. But somehow those microbes have gotten stronger and stronger
0:29
They're like an army. And we don't have the same medical... Even with greatest answers, the germs have really become relatively stronger than they were
0:41
And things that used to work with pneumonia don't work as well anymore. So we'll help
0:47
Anybody that has that kind of a problem, we'll always let it down
0:51
A woman who worked at the laboratory in Irkutsk Oblast has died, and the authorities are looking into whether pneumonic plague caused her death
1:03
Her workplace was an institute that studies dangerous pathogens, including plague, in a part of Siberia where plague occurs naturally in wild animals
1:11
To date, no cause of death has been officially confirmed, and laboratory testing is reportedly underway
1:18
All of the patients' contacts have been reportedly been identified and are being monitored for illness, and none to date have shown symptoms of illness
1:29
WHO is in contact with the Russian health authorities to verify the event its circumstances the laboratory tests underway and the results The rationale for contact tracing and the health status of the contacts as well as any potential international public health implication WHO has offered support
1:49
if needed. It's genuinely very hard to know what to believe about this story. Last night, I brought
1:54
you the view of a microbiologist who thought the risk was being overplayed, and he said he wasn't
1:59
losing any sleep about it. But there are far more alarming views around, and they've become louder
2:04
today. Simple question, therefore, how can we know what's true? Let's hear now from Professor
2:09
Philip David, who runs the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security. Professor David
2:14
thank you very much indeed for joining me. Can I ask that very simple, straightforward question
2:19
We're all alarmed about this. We read these reports from Russian sources, which then go dark
2:25
It's very, very hard to know what's going on. Where do we start? I think we start by trying to identify what we do know about the organization in question
2:35
about the Institute for Anti-Plague Research, which exists in the public domain
2:42
There are always doubts about organizations like this, because sometimes they have been used as
2:47
the cover for biological warfare programs, but also it has a legitimate and visible role. So you
2:52
would start by trying to investigate who they were, what their background is, and the relevance
2:55
It's worth pointing out that, unlike in much of the world, in Central Asia, plague bacterium is still endemic
3:02
It's still a risk of plague. So it represents an immediate, genuine epidemiological issue for the Russians, but it doesn't for us
3:10
Now there were reports from defectors that this was indeed a biological weapons facility certainly some time ago So if that the case is there a worry that this particular pathogen is much more transmittable and less easily treatable Because as I understand it a pneumonic plague by itself
3:30
can be treated with ordinary antibiotics. Correct. I mean, this is the first thing to say
3:36
is that on the whole, it's highly treatable and easily contained. I mean, the Russians have form
3:42
in this area from the Cold War, as you say, when they pursued both biological and chemical weapons
3:48
as what they called weapons of special designation. And there was some retrospective argument about
3:54
how accurate the scale of their activity was in the information from defectors, because there's
3:58
always a danger. A defector will big up the story to make themselves more valuable. On the other hand
4:04
we do know that the use of these weapons was written into Russian military doctrine. So it's
4:10
not fictitious. It's a real issue. There is the possibility there have been limited reports of
4:15
antibiotic-resistant strains, which would be useful in a military context as what they're
4:21
called persistent agents. But at this point, we've got no reason to believe that this particular
4:27
variety of strain is what's in circulation. And I rather agree with your biomedical scientist
4:32
You said that insofar as it is probably pneumonic plague, it's treatable, it's containable. I wouldn't
4:38
lose sleep about it particularly. However, one would hope that the UK government is monitoring
4:46
the Russian reaction because you may recall that the Chinese spent a lot of time playing down
4:50
the impact of COVID-19 until it was far too late. It's in the back of all of our minds that
4:56
absolutely Professor Davies Since I got you here and since you are an expert in security I ruthlessly going to ask you about another big story today which is the news that the former head of the BND the German Security Service has been arrested and charged with treason
5:12
Well, I'm going to be ruthlessly pedantic in return to stress that the BND is their foreign intelligence service, not their security service, because the security service is the BFV
5:23
This is still before the courts, so it still remains to be proven. insofar as it may be the case it is a phenomenally damaging uh situation but it's not merely the
5:33
question of hanning as the former head of the bnd being identified as accused of working for a
5:38
foreign intelligence service also his chief of staff uh amanda calling calling manfred d was also
5:45
uh reportedly not merely working for them when he was hanning's chief of staff um but also chief
5:51
for staff for manning subsequent replacements at the BND. And the mystery is that so far the Germans are saying
5:59
it clearly wasn't the Russians that he was working for, nor the Chinese, which kind of rather runs through the possibilities pretty quickly
6:05
Yeah. And you have to say that you'd need a state level, a major national power to have the capabilities to recruit and run an agent
6:13
in their position with a minimum risk of detection. I'll caveat that, and that is sometimes smaller players do win big
6:20
The Cubans were very successful penetrating the Defense Intelligence Agency in the U.S
6:24
And allegedly there was a translator at the Dutch AIVD who had been run by one of the paramilitary groups
6:32
a terrorist group, for some length of time. And he was also discovered only by accident
6:36
So, you know, it might not necessarily be one of the top two or three. It's a weird and shadowy world
6:41
Professor Davies, thank you very much indeed for talking to LBC
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