00:00All right, moving on to the other big story that has grabbed international attention.
00:05This is the story of a 28-year-old lab worker in Serbia who's now dead.
00:12And nearly 200 people who were in contact with her are now in isolation.
00:16She worked as an anti-plague researcher in the Institute of Arkushka.
00:21Places like these where somebody studies the deadliest bacterias on earth,
00:27so the rest of us don't have to worry about it.
00:30Local Russian media said that she may have died of pneumonic plague.
00:36That's the form that gets into the lungs.
00:38It spreads from person to person when someone coughs as well through droplets.
00:42But I'll be careful here because officially nothing is confirmed.
00:46The head of the neighbouring area there first posted that she died of the plague
00:51but then edited it to say that she may have died of the plague.
00:55Now how she got infected if she was, you know, is also exposed to the virus at all
01:03or the bacteria at all is also unclear.
01:05One version says that she broke a test tube in a lab.
01:08Another says that she fell sick after a work trip.
01:11No official has said which one is actually true.
01:14So here's what we know.
01:16That there is a hospital in Sharliko where she died and that hospital has now been sealed off.
01:25The governor of the area says that contacts have shown no signs of illnesses at least so far.
01:31And their tests so far, those which have been taken, have been negative.
01:35Now this story we reported to you first here on India Today as well.
01:39But now the WHO has stepped in.
01:42It says that Russia has traced all known contacts and none of them have symptoms.
01:47Lab testing is on course of the death is still going on.
01:50WHO is asking Moscow for more details.
01:53Its current view is that the risk of the general public looks low.
01:58That's the WHO.
02:00What is Donald Trump saying by the way?
02:02Donald Trump has weighed in on this matter as well.
02:05He says that US is ready to help Russia if that's needed.
02:09He called the plague a rough disease and said that microbes have become stronger like an army.
02:16But for the record, plague can still be treated with common antibiotics.
02:19This is just information that you should know.
02:22Common antibiotics if it's caught early.
02:26And that if matters a lot because this mnemonic form moves fast.
02:33So why should you care about a plague that has killed one person in Serbia?
02:39Because honestly, the chance of this reaching you is pretty tiny.
02:42WHO is saying it's low.
02:44But there's a history.
02:46Plague isn't a disease from the history books.
02:49It still lives in rodents across Central Asia, in Africa and also America.
02:55And it lives in India too.
02:57In 1994, there was a pneumonic plague in Surat.
03:01Dozens died.
03:02Lacks of people fled the city in panic.
03:04And several countries stopped flights to India.
03:06In 2002, there was another outbreak in a village in Shimla district.
03:10And this bacteria has been used as, remember, a weapon before.
03:15This is where you need to go back to your history lessons.
03:18During the Second World War, Japan's Unit 731 bred fleas, infected with the plague and dropped them over Chinese cities.
03:27Thousands of citizens died.
03:29After the war, Soviet Union's secret bioweapons program worked on plague as a weapon too.
03:35The Soviet Union also had a record of hiding lab incidents.
03:39In 1979, Antrax league from a military facility killed dozens of people.
03:46Moscow blamed bad meat for more than a decade.
03:51So, the question at the moment about why there is so much chatter about this plague which has killed one
03:57person,
03:58isn't whether this virus or this bacteria in fact exists,
04:02is whether this reaches Delhi.
04:05The question is how safe our labs holding the world's deadliest germs really are,
04:10and whether we've been told the truth when something goes wrong.
04:14We all remember Ruan, right?
04:17But for now, let me underline this again.
04:19There is no evidence of a wider outbreak just yet.
04:22What killed her and how is an answer everyone is waiting for.
