(Newswire.net— August 11, 2020) — Media in China focuses attention on a town in a Chinese province where one person died of the bubonic plague in that city, VoA reports.
Panic reigned in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia after the quarantine was introduced in another village in that part of China.
A man died of bubonic plague in the town of Bayannaoer, a prefecture-level city in western Inner Mongolia, People’s Republic of China. The town population is 1.67 million people. The area where the patient lived has been put under quarantine.
Tracing back the steps of the deceased patient whose organs started failing due to the bubonic plague has lead to his native village, which was immediately placed in strict quarantine, a few weeks after one village was already closed.
“The place of residence of the deceased is locked down, and a comprehensive epidemiological investigation is being carried out,” the announcement posted on the commission’s website said.
On Thursday, another person died of bubonic plague in the neighboring city of Baotou, the largest in the autonomous province of Inner Mongolia. According to the Baotou authorities, the man died from the collapse of the bloodstream due to the bubonic plague infection, after which the authorities immediately closed the village where the deceased came into contact with the disease for the first time.
The authorities in both cities issued a third-level alert – the second lowest in a four-level system – effective immediately until the end of 2020, to prevent the spread of the disease, VoA reports.
The bubonic plague is a highly contagious and often deadly disease, hence such extreme measures.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the rate of deaths among those suffering from this disease when left untreated is between thirty and 100 percent.
The disease is caused by the bite of an infected flea that usually lives on the body of rodents, such as rats. After the flea bites the host, the bacterium Yersinia pestis reaches the nearest lymph node, where it multiplies, causing swelling.
Cases have become increasingly rare in recent years in China. According to China’s National Health Commission, there were five cases in 2019, with one death. Worldwide, there are 1,000 to 2,000 cases each year that are reported to the WHO.