What is pulmonary plague and why its appearance in China worries

If left untreated, the disease has a fatality rate close to 100%, experts say. The plague is usually transmitted by rats.

The rarest but most lethal form of plague has appeared in China. Two people were hospitalized in Beijing after contracting pulmonary or pneumonic plague – a highly infectious and often fatal variant – confirmed the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday (13).

The two patients, originally from Inner Mongolia – northern China – were quarantined after being diagnosed with the disease, according to health officials in Chaoyang district east of the Chinese capital.

According to WHO, the Chinese government is trying to contain and treat both cases and has increased its vigilance.

One variesnte dangerous

Pulmonary plague is a disease that affects humans and other mammals. It is caused by bacteria. Yersinia pestis.

Humans often get infected by biting infected fleas, which live in small mammals like mice, or by manipulating an animal infected with the disease.

Its mortality rate may be high, but antibiotic treatment is effective if given within 24 hours of infection.

According to WHO, there are three forms of plague infection: bubonic – the most common, affecting the lymph nodes -, septicemia – occurs when the infection spreads through blood flow – and pulmonary when it affects the lungs.

The bubonic, also called the Black Death, is perhaps the most famous, since in the Middle Ages it caused one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.

Less common, it is the most virulent form of plague. It usually occurs due to the spread to the lungs of an advanced bubonic infection and is usually transmitted by mice, although it is also possible to pass from one person to another through a simple cough.

If left untreated, pulmonary plague has a lethality rate close to 100%.

Chinese health officials said that all people at risk of exposure to the disease were located and treated, and that hospitals intensified monitoring of people with similar symptoms.

They added that the risk of a plague outbreak in the country is minimal.

OTHER CASES

Outbreaks in China are infrequent, but much of the northwestern city of Yumen was quarantined in 2014 after a 38-year-old died of bubonic plague.

Rodent populations have increased in Inner Mongolia following persistent droughts, aggravated by climate change.

In neighboring Mongolia, two people died last spring after eating raw groundhog, a food that can carry the bacteria. Yersinia pestis.

In Madagascar, a plague outbreak in 2017 left more than 200 people dead.