Taipei:Taiwan will monitor online rumors suggesting that a pneumonic plague outbreak has spread from Russia to certain Chinese provinces, Premier Cho Jung-tai stated on Tuesday, as reported by the national Central News Agency.

According to Anadolu Agency, Cho mentioned the island might consider strengthening existing quarantine measures in response to these rumors. During a legislative meeting, Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Wang Ting-yu inquired about the government's preparedness to prevent the disease from reaching Taiwan, given the frequent exchanges with mainland China.

Cho assured that health authorities have already implemented border quarantine measures and emphasized that the government is "highly, highly concerned." He added that relevant authorities would keep monitoring online information from China to identify any "suspicious" developments, which could lead to enhanced quarantine measures.

Taiwanese health authorities have reached out to the World Health Organization to verify whether the October 2 death of a 28-year-old laboratory worker at Russia's Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute was due to pneumonic plague, as stated by Health Minister Shih Chung-liang. Shih noted that no tests of pathogens or samples have returned positive results, so it cannot yet be concluded that the plague was the cause.

China's state-run Global Times reported that Hulunbuir, a city in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region near Russia's Far East, issued a plague prevention notice following reports of a suspected fatal plague case. The World Health Organization had sought additional information from Russia regarding the death of the institute employee and reports of a second employee's death. However, Russia later denied reports of a second illness in the Siberian region of Irkutsk.