Lithuania may restrict transit from Russia if plague threat confirmed: Minister

Lithuania may restrict the transit of Russian citizens through the country if a reported pneumonic plague case in Russia is confirmed and poses a threat, Health Minister Linas Kukuraitis said Wednesday.

"If we saw even the slightest threat, this issue would be raised by us, and decisions would then be made jointly," Kukuraitis told Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT.

He said any measures would be coordinated with the EU and that Lithuania had procedures and sufficient medication reserves to respond to a possible outbreak.

Kukuraitis stressed that reports of a pneumonic plague case in Russia had not been independently confirmed.

"It is both a worrying situation, and we would like to reassure the public," he said.

Lithuania's National Public Health Centre said there was currently no increased risk of plague infection in the country and that the reported case could not be independently confirmed.

Reports emerged Friday that a 28-year-old woman who worked at a plague research institute in Russia's Irkutsk region had died of pneumonic plague.

Russian officials, however, said tests conducted after her death did not detect the disease.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that authorities were investigating whether pneumonic plague caused the woman's death and that no official cause of death had been confirmed.

The WHO said all the woman's contacts had been identified and were being monitored, with none showing symptoms.

Its initial assessment put the risk at moderate to low for Irkutsk, low for Russia as a whole and very low for the WHO European region.