Asked about the death following Rubio’s remarks, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov cited the findings by Rospotrebnadzor.
Asked about the offer of help from the United States, he said it was a “good thing when mutual assistance is offered”.
Also on Tuesday, Rospotrebnadzor issued a statement aimed at quelling speculation in a document circulating online about special anti-plague measures allegedly put in place.
“We wish to clarify that the document and information in question do not originate from official sources and are untrue,” it said on Telegram.
The plague bacterium or Yersinia pestis, external, which killed up to half the population of Europe in the 14th Century when it was known as the Black Death, is found among rodents such as marmots in the area.
It was in response to an outbreak in the 1920s that the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East, external was founded just more than 100 years ago.
Dr Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme that the pneumonic version of Yersinia pestis was nearly always fatal if left untreated, but could be overcome with antibiotics.
“Pneumonic plague can transmit from person to person and that is why there is the concern around this,” he said.
He added: “But of course people’s thought with any outbreak of infectious disease at all runs to… lockdowns and Covid and that is just not what’s going to happen here.”
“People think, ‘Oh the plague, that’s gone, that went hundreds of years ago,’ but it hasn’t,” Clarke said.
“It’s a threat to human health and that’s why they need to study it.”
