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XOIIO's avatar

What ever happened to the 2016 anthrax outbreak in Siberia?

Asked by XOIIO (18328points) December 13th, 2018
5 responses
“Great Question” (3points)

Hey all, long time no see.

While watching the series Mars I leaned about an anthrax outbreak in Siberia, something which I hadn’t heard about before, and there is a complete lack of information from what I can find except for the initial articles about it in 2016.

What ever happened? Did they get it under control or is it still something going on to this day that just got covered up?

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rojo's avatar

@XOIIO You are right. Other than a myriad of articles regarding the initial stages of the outbreak (with widely varying estimates of the number of victims) there appears to be no follow up information.

From the articles it appears that they did manage to contain it, sending in military units trained in biological warfare (they had all the right safety equipment), kill off a bunch of likely infected reindeer, treat most of those who had contracted the disease and only had one casualty, a twelve year old boy, Although the boys grandmother had died the day before he did and they did not determine the cause of her death so there may have been two fatalities, not one.

It would be interesting to know though. Was further reporting on it suppressed? The Russian government would not appreciate the negative aspects of this news. Did they contain and dispose of the infected herders? Was the treatment and containment successful and therefore it was no longer considered news? Anthrax can be treated and the US has developed antitoxin therapies that clean out the toxins instead of going after the bacteria but I think they are still considered experimental. Surely the Russians have investigated similar lines of treatment.

Or did we simply move on to the next sensational news item after this one had its three minute time in the spotlight?

rojo's avatar

Interesting Article along similar lines as the cause of the Anthrax outbreak.

flutherother's avatar

The 2016 anthrax outbreak was due to an exceptionally warm summer in Siberia which melted the permafrost and exposed an infected reindeer carcass in the Siberian Tundra. Reindeer herding families were evacuated out of the danger area and troops trained for biological warfare were sent in to deal with the emergency. 800,000 reindeer were vaccinated against anthrax and 2,300 infected reindeer carcasses were incinerated before the outbreak was brought under control.

There was a previous anthrax incident in Russia in In April 1979 when safety air filters at a military facility that had been conducting B. anthracis studies in the city of Sverdlovsk were compromised during routine maintenance, resulting in bacterial cells spreading downwind of the facility. At least 66 people and some livestock died of inhalational anthrax

XOIIO's avatar

@rojo that’s basically what I was wondering, considering it took place in Russia. I had also seen an article about anthrax being released in some sort of factory explosion but it was unrelated.

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