Bayannur, one of the cities in North China has sounded a level 3 alert in the region owing to potential bubonic plague.
T
he bubonic plague, known as the “Black Death” in the Middle Ages, comes from the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, and is a highly infectious and often fatal disease spread mostly by rodents via fleas.
It killed between 75 and 200 million people in the 14th century, and at least 30 to 50 million from the year 541 to 549.
DNA results confirm cause of The Great Plague of London
According to the WHO website, the lung-based pneumonic plague is extremely contagious and “can trigger severe epidemics through person-to-person contact via droplets in the air”.
Symptoms include fever, chills, vomiting and nausea.
The plague can be fatal in up to 90 percent of people infected if not treated, primarily with several types of antibiotics.
Plague cases are not uncommon in China, but outbreaks have become increasingly rare. From 2009 to 2018, China reported 26 cases and 11 deaths.
In 2014, a man died of the plague in northwestern Gansu province, sparking the quarantine of 151 people.
The 30,000 people living in Yumen, the town where the man died, were also prevented from leaving with police at roadblocks placed on the town perimeter.
In 2009, an outbreak also claimed the lives of several people in the town of Ziketan in Qinghai province on the Tibetan Plateau.
But China has vastly improved its detection and management of infectious diseases since the 2003 outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and the latest coronavirus pandemic, which was first reported in Wuhan in late 2019.
