China has issued a nationwide bubonic plague alert following a case in the Northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the country. Level 3 alert has been issued, which also calls for prevention and control of the same. The alert forbids the hunting and eating of animals that could carry plague and asks the public to report any suspected cases of plague or fever with no clear causes and to report any sick or dead marmots.
This comes after the Chinese news agency Xinhua had reported two cases of bubonic plague in the Khovd Province of Mongolia in Bayan Nur. Two brothers had reportedly contracted this disease after consuming the meat of marmot.
Bubonic plague is a disease that could have a pandemic level effect if contracted and spread. It is a relatively rare disease in today’s world, but it is prevalent in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and Peru. It is caused by coming into contact with fleas, which have bitten rodents. This plague causes swelling of lymph nodes and could have a fatality rate of 30-60 %.
This sparked controversy worldwide because a similar plague had wiped out nearly half of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages. It was even dubbed ‘black death’, because it causes the blackening of fingernails, which is the first symptom of the disease. This was one of the worst pandemics in human history that claimed millions of lives in the 14th and 15th centuries.