WASHINGTON — President Trump said Tuesday that he will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin “very soon” about a plague institute worker’s death in Siberia — and that he believes the US government will be able to share more information Wednesday.
“I have a call scheduled very soon,” Trump told reporters Tuesday evening at the White House.
Asked what US intelligence agencies are telling him, Trump said: “So far we are in very deep discussions. We will be able to report about it probably tomorrow.”
Lab technician Daria Shipilova, 28, died on Friday in a hospital outside Irkutsk, prompting a flurry of speculation that her illness was related to her work at the nearby Anti-Plague Research Institute. She died after reportedly accidentally breaking a test tube containing a deadly pathogen before being infected.
There has been significant concern that she may have died from pneumonic plague, which can spread from person to person through respiration.
That form of plague is almost always fatal, but can be treated with common antibiotics.
Soviet scientists in the 1980s successfully modified the bacterium responsible for pneumonic plague, Yersinia pestis, to make it resistant to antibiotics for use as a biological weapon.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
