Trump to Call Putin Over Suspected Plague Outbreak in Russia

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters he would shortly speak with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to discuss a possible plague outbreak in Russia. Asked whether he had already raised the subject with Putin, Trump said the call would happen soon.

When reporters asked what U.S. intelligence agencies were saying about the situation, Trump promised to share that information "tomorrow," according to AFP.

Russian state news agencies, including TASS and RIA Novosti, ran short items on the forthcoming Trump–Putin conversation but did not say what the American president intends to raise.

How the plague talk began

Speculation about a possible plague outbreak in the Irkutsk region started after an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute died in a hospital in the town of Shelekhov. Sources cited by several media outlets said she may have had pneumonic plague. People of Baikal reported that several Irkutsk hospitals had been placed under quarantine. That information has been neither confirmed nor denied.

Russia's consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor officially stated that the woman's cause of death was "pneumonia of undetermined etiology." Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov urged Russians to rely solely on official Rospotrebnadzor information regarding the potential outbreak.