A town in China was closed off as 151 people were placed in quarantine after a man's death from bubonic plague. Yumen, Gansu province residents are not allowed to leave.
The 38-year-old man died on July 16 after he was infected by a wild rodent called marmot. Some city districts of around 100,000 residents in Gansu were turned to quarantine zones. Reports said that the victim found the dead marmot and cut it to feed his dog but he had a fever shortly after. The man was taken to the hospital when his condition got worse and died on Wednesday. A marmot is a relative to the squirrel and lives on grasslands.
Yumen allotted 1 million yuan or $171,000 for vaccinations. The outbreak is a bacterial disease that spreads through wild rodent fleas such as that of the marmots. The disease can be treated effectively but patients may die within 24 hours after the first contact. According to reports, Yumen has enough flour, oil and rice to supply the residents for one month. The people in quarantine and the local residents are in stable condition. The 30,000 Yumen residents in northwestern Gansu are sealed off as police roadblocks on the city's perimeter tell motorists to use alternative routes.
The bubonic outbreak is believed to originate in China over 2,600 years ago. It killed around one third of Europe's population in the Middle Ages. China categorizes plague as a "Class A infectious disease" saying it is the most serious under China's Law n the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases. The Modern Plague is a more recent outbreak that started in China in the 1860s. It reached Hong Kong in 1894.
The disease is not spread human to human as humans usually contract the infection from flea bites and wild rodents. An infected person will experience symptoms between two and five days following bacteria exposure and these include chills, painful lymph gland swelling and fever.
These plagues are rare in this day and age but a couple of fatal cases were reported recently in parts of Africa and Asia. In December last year, an outbreak hit Madagascar and killed at least 20 people. There were 60 reported deaths related to plague in Madagascar in the same year.
