Russia downplays plague reports as Trump offers US help

Russia downplayed reports Monday that a lab technician died of plague, while President Donald Trump said Washington was monitoring the situation and offered US help. Russian officials said postmortem tests found no disease, citing pneumonia of undetermined aetiology. The reports, which emerged Friday, claimed 28-year-old Darya Shipilova died of pneumonic plague contracted from a broken test tube at an anti-plague institute in Siberia's Irkutsk region. Up to 200 contacts were reportedly quarantined, but Governor Igor Kobzev said the situation was stable and no new cases had emerged. Plague is a bacterial disease, with pneumonic plague being the most contagious form. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there was no cause for alarm but that Washington was monitoring closely, given memories of the Covid-19 pandemic and Trump's lab-leak theory.