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 there is a – very small – risk of an outbreak, and partly because it is yet another warning that the international coordination we rely on to prevent pandemics is fraying along with the rest of international politics, and could easily fail to protect us in the future.

US research says nitrogen dioxide in restaurants that cook with gas can exceed WHO limits, which also affects diners

Each time we enjoy a meal out or order a takeaway, someone cooks for us in a commercial kitchen. In the UK, 3.6 million people work in catering and hospitality. In the US it is estimated at close to 16 million. A first-of-its-kind study in the US has found catering staff can experience high air pollution at work – and that this can affect diners too.

Dr Drew Michanowicz, senior author of the study at non-profit research institute PSE Healthy Energy, said: “I was motivated by what we have learned over the years about what just 30 minutes of gas cooking can do to air quality in homes with the realisation that millions of people cook for a living for hours on end.”

Russia’s silence over the death of a lab worker underlines that pandemic preparedness amounts to nothing if information on threats is withheld

In pandemic preparedness work, scientists like to focus on the technical challenges: identifying pathogens, diagnosing infections, understanding their effects and developing vaccines and treatments. Each step promises progress through human innovation, investment and planning. The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, brings experts together to identify and prioritise emerging disease threats and collect the evidence needed to prepare for them. But preparedness depends on more than scientific innovation.

As the past week has shown, politics is the elephant in the room in all of this. No one could have predicted we would be talking about pneumonic plague, and that the death of a single lab worker in Russia would cause global headlines. It might feel like an overreaction: the WHO deals with thousands of potential disease signals worldwide every month. But the circumstances of this case are unusual given the lack of transparency from Russian authorities on what happened – and ongoing concern about biological weapons research.

World Health Organization detects no sign of further outbreak since Darya Shipilova died last week

The World Health Organization has said the risk of an epidemic in Russia is low after the sudden death of a lab technician who worked at a plague research institute in Siberia.

Darya Shipilova, who was 28, died last week, two days after falling ill. Russian media reports suggested she may have become infected after an accident at her workplace, where dangerous pathogens are kept and studied.