U.S. monitors suspected Russian plague case as Trump plans call with Putin

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has a call scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the pneumonic plague, after the death of a female staffer at a Russian anti-plague lab that’s sparked public health fears worldwide.

Asked whether he had spoken with Putin about the matter, Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn that he had a “call scheduled” and that it would take place “very soon.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks.

Trump had told reporters Monday that he was willing to help Russia, calling the pneumonic plague “a rough disease.”

“I hate to see them having it,” Trump said. “Anybody that has that kind of a problem, we’re always willing to help.”

A Russian health watchdog said last week that Darya Shipilova, 28, a staffer at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East, had died from a “pneumonia of undetermined” origin.

The watchdog concluded that plague was not found among the staffer’s contacts, saying only that they found two cases of Covid and one of rhinovirus.

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A State Department official told NBC News earlier Tuesday that the U.S. had been in contact with the Russian government regarding the incident since as early as Friday, following reports of Shipilova’s death.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Russia should share more information with the world, but asked the public not to jump to conclusions.

“Maybe, you know, there’s nothing there. Maybe it’s bigger than we thought. We don’t know,” Rubio told reporters during a news conference in Iceland. “But I think it would be reckless at this moment, given the limited information we still have, to speculate about what this might or might not be or what this is or what this isn’t.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday it was aware and monitoring reports of the death, which it called “a suspected case of pneumonic plague in the Irkutsk region of Russia.”

“At this time, there is no indication of a broader threat to the United States, but CDC and our interagency partners are prepared and will continue to monitor the situation closely,” the CDC wrote on X.