Inner Mongolian City Is Taking Precautions Against Suspected Case Of Bubonic Plague

In a city of China's Inner Mongolian region, authorities have placed control measures after a hospital reported a suspected case of bubonic plague in a local herdsman.

According to a report, Bayan Nur, a prefecture-level city located in the western part of Inner Mongolia, has prohibited the hunting and eating of animals as they could be carrying plague: a deadly and highly contagious disease that affects humans and mammals alike and caused by the bacterium, Yersinia pestis.

With this warning, the city has also issued an advisory that all sudden occurrences of fever without any clear causes must be reported as well as other symptoms of the disease such as painful, swollen lymph nodes or 'buboes' in the groin or armpit that can be as big as a chicken egg, muscle aches, headache, chills, and tiredness.

Although it is unknown how the said herdsman has been infected, the health committee of Bayan Nur has been on third-level alert, the second-lowest alert level, since Sunday.

Since the bacteria that causes plague lives mainly in some animals like rodents and their fleas, the authorities have not only forbidden the hunting and eating of the said animals but has also advised the residents to avoid getting bitten by fleas, touching animals and being in close proximity to them. This is due to the fact that humans can catch the disease in several ways: inhaling respiratory droplets coming from infected animals, infection entering the body through a cut in a human's skin, or through the body of someone who has died from the bubonic plague.

Four cases of plague have been confirmed in people from Inner Mongolia last November, and since untreated bubonic plague can rapidly develop into pneumonia, two of the said cases were recorded as the highly fatal pneumonic plague.

Additional reports cited that the 1911 pneumonic plague epidemic which killed 63,000 people in Northeast China could be caused by marmots that have been popular among international traders for its fur.

The said infectious disease has not been rare in China though outbreaks have been relatively controlled. Current records show that there has been a total of 26 reported plague cases and 11 plague-related deaths in the country from 2009 to 2018.