The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it has established measures to “identify and assess” any travelers from the Russian region where a possible plague case was reported.
In a statement on Wednesday, the agency noted that roughly 200 travelers from the region arrive in the U.S. over the course of a year. These travelers enter the country through airports where CDC staff are already positioned.
“CDC is closely monitoring the situation and has established measures in place to identify and assess travelers arriving from the affected region,” the CDC’s statement read, in part. “CDC has longstanding systems and trained personnel in place to detect and respond to potential public health risks at U.S. ports of entry. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and adjust our public health response as conditions warrant.”
Currently, there are no do-not-board orders related to the reported case. The Do Not Board list, which is enforced by the Transportation Security Administration, prevents people from obtaining a boarding pass for a flight into, out of, or within the U.S. for travelers known or suspected to have a contagious disease that poses a public health threat.
During an event on Wednesday, Dr. Erica Schwartz, the CDC’s director, said the agency is “well positioned to make sure that we are protected from a potential threat” such as plague.
“We are working with Department of Homeland Security, working [with] Department of State, Department of War and other agencies within the government to make sure that we know exactly if anyone from that area comes into the United States,” Schwartz said at the Wall Street Journal’s The Future of Health event in Washington, D.C.
“We are very confident that the threat to the United States is extremely low,” she added.
It came after World Health Organization (WHO) officials said during a press conference on Wednesday they do not currently have enough information from Russian authorities to conduct a full risk assessment after the death of a plague laboratory worker in Siberia.
Initial media reports suggested a lab worker at Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute died of the plague, but Russian officials later disputed this, saying the worker died of pneumonia and that the illness was not linked to work in the lab.
During the press conference, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency asked the Russian Federation for more information on Saturday. The Russian Federation replied on Tuesday, saying no case of plague had recently been reported in the Irkutsk Oblast, in southeastern Siberia, and that about 200 contacts had been placed in quarantine.
ABC News’ Christopher Boccia and Othon Leyva contributed to this report.
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