Plague Outbreak in China

The Black Death also known as The Plague is pretty scary to think about because in the fourteenth century, it killed sixty percent of Europe's people. It's still around today, in rural parts of the US and recently, in China, where an outbreak may have occurred. We know of at least three cases but since China is withholding information, we really don't know the extent of the outbreak.

A fifty-nine year old man from Xilingol League, a rural region of Inner Mongolia, was diagnosed with plague after eating a wild rabbit. He was isolated and treated and twenty-eight people he had close contact with were placed in medical quarantine.

Just days earlier, a married couple from the same area was diagnosed with pneumonic plague. They were evacuated and quarantined in Beijing, China because pneumonic plague can be spread through the air.

One contributing factor to these plague cases may be the increases in rodent populations after persistent drought made worse by climate change. The bacterium responsible, Yersinia pestis, circulates in groups of wild rats. Humans are usually infected when they're bit by an infected flea off an infected rodent. But they can also become infected when they eat or handle infected animals such as rabbits.

Antibiotics are usually effective if people are treated in time. The Chinese Health Commission has reported that six people have died of the plague since two thousand fourteen, but this group of recent cases makes us wonder if the numbers are underreported.