The Guardian view on plague in Russia: what is most worrying is the lack of information | Editorial

In the three weeks since a health worker’s death in Siberia, officials have stonewalled the WHO – setting a worrying precedent for future pandemics Is there a plague outbreak in Russia? If the answer were a clear yes, there shouldn’t be much reason to worry. With swift medical intervention, plague is treatable.

But in the nearly three weeks since a worker at a Siberian plague research unit died of a mysterious respiratory illness, state officials have been consistently tight-lipped about what happened and whether there were any further cases. It is this uncertainty that has the World Health Organization (WHO) and international community worried: partly because…