Darya Shipilova was 28 years old. She worked in a lab in the Irkutsk region of Russia. A lab is a room for tests. In her lab, people study very bad germs. Local news said she broke a test tube. The tube had plague germs in it.
On 29 September she went to the hospital in Shelekhov. Shelekhov is a town near Irkutsk. She was very sick. Her lungs were bad. She died a few days later.
Plague is a very old illness. One kind goes into the lungs. It goes from person to person when people cough. Without medicine, people almost always die.
Doctors watched nearly 200 people. These people were maybe near Darya. The hospital in Shelekhov closed.
Igor Kobzev is the governor, the boss of the Irkutsk region. He said everything was under control. For one day, he did not say the word “plague.”
People in Shelekhov saw people in the street in special suits, masks and gloves. Parents said small children got masks at kindergarten.
On 4 October a Russian health office spoke. It said Darya died of an illness in her lungs. It said nobody knew the cause yet.
But one person said something else. Doctors in Irkutsk talked about plague. They said the word out loud. The word was not on the government papers.