Reports of plague in Siberia, and Dominic Hauschild on Russian secrecy
The Sunday Times defense correspondent's Times Radio Breakfast interview left every other Sunday clip on the channel far behind, and its comment section is trying to sort out what is actually known.
Times RadioStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 220,576 views a day, 26 times a normal first day on this channel (8,621).
Siberian Flu 'Declared A Covid-Style Plague By Russian Health Department' | Dominic Hauschild
What is going on in Siberia? Dominic Hauschild, defense correspondent for The Sunday Times, went on Times Radio Breakfast on Sunday to explain reports of pneumonic plague there. His answer, as the clip's description sets it out, starts with how hard the facts are to establish, because of the Russian government's secrecy around the incident.
The title goes further than that. It quotes reports that the disease was "Declared A Covid-Style Plague By Russian Health Department", and the description opens on a line from the interview about fears of another Wuhan situation. Hauschild was speaking to presenters Rosie Wright and Calum Macdonald on the weekend breakfast show.
A new clip on the channel usually ends its first day with under 9,000 views. This one was close to 200,000 within 19 hours. Sunday's other uploads, from AI safety with Adam Boulton to a Green Party motion discussed with Ryan Tubridy, did not come near it.
The comments cover a lot of ground. The most liked ones doubt the official account of where the outbreak began, and plenty of viewers reach for zombie video games and end-of-the-world jokes. Others try to pin the story down: one points out that the title says flu while the report is about plague, another explains how pneumonic plague differs from the bubonic kind, and several bring up Siberia's thawing permafrost as a place old diseases could come back from.
It continues a run in which stories from far outside Britain have carried Times Radio, from the Christa Pike case in Tennessee to an Oman flying ban, as we reported here.
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- Channel
- Times Radio
- Subscribers
- 1,300,000 ▲ 10,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 7,651,682
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,493,732 (on a normal day: 883,739)
- Video published
- October 4, 2026
- Video views so far
- 199,807 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 220,576
The numbers
A breakfast-show segment on a story from Siberia ran far ahead of anything else the channel posted on Sunday.
