The agency says about 200 people a year travel from the affected region to the United States and describes the risk to the country as extremely low.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it has measures to identify and assess travellers arriving from Irkutsk region. CDC staff are already stationed at the airports through which the roughly 200 annual arrivals from the area enter the country. The agency said there are no Do Not Board orders tied to the report. Director Erica Schwartz said the CDC was coordinating with the departments of Homeland Security, State and War.
The monitoring follows reports about the death of a worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute. The World Health Organization said it still lacks enough information from Russian authorities to complete a risk assessment. Russia told the WHO that no plague cases had recently been recorded in Irkutsk region and that about 200 contacts had been quarantined.
Russian officials say the worker died of pneumonia of unknown origin and that the illness was not connected to her laboratory work. The Associated Press reported on October 8 that the regional governor said quarantine measures had ended and no dangerous pathogens had been detected. No plague outbreak in Irkutsk region has been confirmed.