Soviet authorities blamed a 1979 anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk that killed at least 68 people on contaminated meat, hiding a biological weapons lab filter failure.

From the articleMoscow's Secrecy About Suspected Plague Case Follows a Pattern From the Soviet EraAlso in Russia’s Silence on Possible Plague Outbreak Stokes Fears of a Cover-Up, ‘Not great, not terrible’: Why nobody trusts Russia to tell the truth about plague, How Moscow’s secrecy about a suspected plague case follows a Soviet-era pattern