According to the Baotou Municipal Health Commission, the death was officially reported to authorities on August 2. The patient was confirmed to have had the bubonic plague, a rare but serious bacterial infection that spreads through contact with infected fleas and animals, on August 6. According to the Dhaka Tribune, a second individual, a resident of Inner Mongolia’s Bayannur, also died from the bubonic plague last week.
The patient in Suji Xincun died from circulatory system failure, but no details were provided on how the patient contracted the disease, the International Business Times reported.
Following the patient’s death, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Comprehensive Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a Level 3 warning in Damao Banner, the district where the village is located. The alert is the second-lowest of four possible warning levels.
The alert will be in place under the end of the year. In addition, authorities have sealed off Suji Xincun and have ordered that all homes in the village undergo daily disinfecting. In addition, nine close contacts and 26 secondary contacts to the patient were quarantined and have tested negative for the plague.
The recent deaths come after a bubonic plague case was detected in July in Bayannur, the New York Times reported. At the time, authorities also instituted a Level 3 alert and shut down several tourist spots.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, symptoms of the bubonic plague include “fever, headache, chills and weakness and one or more swollen, tender and painful lymph nodes.”
The Black Death was an outbreak of the bubonic plague that hit Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s and resulted in the deaths of between 75 and 200 million people.
