A cholera epidemic in the southern region of Dagestan has spread into Moscow, claiming one life and infecting a second victim, but a city health official said Tuesday that the outbreak had been nipped in the bud.


Galina Maninkova, epidemiologist at the city's Sanitary-Epidemiological Surveillance Committee, said that two potato traders from Dagestan had arrived in Moscow last week with symptoms of cholera. One died in hospital the same day from a heart problem complicated by the infection, she said.


The second salesman has all but recovered, and 26 people who had been in contact with the two tested negative, Maninkova said.


"It's all under control. The situation is satisfactory," Maninkova said, eager to avoid the kind of international uproar that followed last year's outbreak of diphtheria and four cases of cholera in Moscow. "But you can't exclude incidents like this."


Earlier this month, a Danish tourist was the first this year to come down with cholera, but she had caught the disease in India and was quickly repatriated.


Health officials have reported 9,962 cases of diphtheria in Russia during the first five months of this year, of which 1,357 cases occurred in Moscow. Cholera broke out in three villages in Dagestan this summer after three Moslems caught the virus on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.


Health authorities Saturday declared five towns in the Dagestan region quarantine zones, Reuters reported. It quoted officials as saying that the disease had spread among relatives of returning pilgrims, but gave no figures or further details.


Maninkova said that hygiene inspectors tested food sold in markets throughout Moscow but had no orders to be on the lookout for Dagestani traders, who bring in much of the city's produce. Anyone catching the disease in Dagestan, she said, would be very unlikely to complete the five-day trip to Moscow before falling too ill to travel.


"You simply need to wash your vegetables and boil potatoes," Maninkova advised Muscovites. "And wash your hands."