A health station has been set up at New York's JFK Airport to conduct surveillance and screening if travelers from Siberia arrive, after a laboratory worker in Russia died under circumstances that remain disputed between Russian authorities and international health officials. U.S. officials say the risk to Americans is extremely low, even as questions about the woman's cause of death remain unresolved.
According to FOX 5 Atlanta, officials have confirmed a port health station is set up at JFK to conduct surveillance and screening if anyone from the area comes into the United States, while President Donald Trump plans to discuss the situation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. is coordinating across federal agencies on plans to monitor travelers arriving from Siberia, according to Axios, which reports that roughly 200 people fly from Siberia to the U.S. each year, with most of them landing at JFK. “We have a port health station set up in JFK so that we can do appropriate surveillance and screening,” an official told the outlet.
CDC Director Erica Schwartz struck a reassuring tone, saying, “We are very confident that the threat to the United States is extremely low,” per the same Axios report. The agency added in a statement that “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.”
Conflicting Accounts of a Lab Worker's Death
At the center of the alarm is the death of a 28-year-old woman who worked at Russia's Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute. The World Health Organization said she died Friday with no cause of death confirmed, according to NBC News. Russian officials attributed her death to pneumonia of undetermined origin and did not link it to her laboratory work, the outlet reported.
That account conflicts with comments from Alexei Tsydenov, head of the neighboring republic of Buryatia, who confirmed that the woman had died from an unspecified form of plague, according to the Moscow Times. The form of plague was not specified in that statement, and Russian health officials have not confirmed the plague attribution.
Adding to the uncertainty, the WHO said a second employee at the lab reportedly developed pneumonia of undetermined cause, though that case had not been verified, NBC News reported. Russia's consumer and health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, denied there was a second case at all. The Associated Press reports that the WHO wants more details from Russia about the worker's death.
Nearly 200 Contacts Monitored, Then Cleared
Nearly 200 people who had contact with the woman were placed under precautionary medical observation, the NBC News report notes. Rospotrebnadzor said that monitoring of all her contacts concluded on Thursday, October 8, without detecting any infectious-disease-related health problems. Russia has said its epidemiological situation remains stable and that there is no risk of an epidemic breaking out in Siberia, per Axios.
How Pneumonic Plague Spreads and Why Experts Aren't Alarmed
Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, a zoonotic bacteria usually found in small mammals and their fleas, according to the World Health Organization. Pneumonic plague can spread through the air when an infected person or animal coughs or sneezes, the WHO notes, and it can be fatal within 18 to 24 hours of onset if left untreated.
Still, experts interviewed by NBC News said the pneumonic form isn't something that spreads distantly across a room, posing its greatest risk instead to close, face-to-face contacts. Axios reports that it is highly treatable if patients receive treatment within 24 hours of symptom onset. Former White House Covid response coordinator Ashish Jha told NBC News that person-to-person transmission is difficult, adding that “the chances that this becomes a larger outbreak, let alone a global pandemic, is exceedingly low.”
Plague cases are reported in the U.S. most years, typically in rural areas of the Southwest, and in July 2025 a man in Arizona died of pneumonic plague after exposure to sick cats, per NBC News. Globally, nearly 4,000 suspected human plague cases and 423 deaths have been reported across 10 countries.
