Russian Space Official Tests Positive for Coronavirus After Attending Soyuz Crew Launch to Space Station
"Potential ISS contamination is absolutely impossible."

By Chelsea Gohd |

SPACE.COM - April 21, 2020 | A Russian space official has tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, but it's "impossible" that any contamination has spread to the International Space Station, Russia's space agency told Space.com.

On April 15, the Russian news agency TASS confirmed that Evegeny Mikrin, the deputy CEO and chief designer at RSC Energia, tested positive for coronavirus.

A Russian Soyuz 2.1a rocket carrying the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft stands atop the launchpad at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan to launch three new crewmembers to the International Space Station on April 9, 2020. A Russian official who attended the launch has recently tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
(Image: © RSC Energia )

"Mikrin has passed two tests for the coronavirus and both are positive. He has been included in the list of 30 persons officially declared as infected in Roscosmos (Russia's space agency)," a source told TASS. The source added that Mikrin has, reportedly, not so far shown any clinical symptoms of the disease.

Mikrin was present at the most recent crewed launch to the space station, which launched April 9 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. He was seen relatively close to Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner prior to the launch, according to the New York Post.