Kazakhstan’s Health Ministry has introduced sanitary and quarantine checks at border crossings, saying it is closely following the situation in Russia’s Irkutsk region, where a 28-year-old technician at an anti-plague research institute has died. The ministry said no arriving travelers had shown high fever or symptoms and described the risk as low.


According to Rospotrebnadzor, the technician had been diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown origin, while Buryatia’s leader Alexei Tsydenov wrote that she had possibly died of plague. Unofficial reports say nearly 200 people were put under observation in Shelekhov, and Russian health officials describe the situation as stable.
