A 15-year-old boy is said to have died in China after contracting bubonic plague from Marmot meat. According to Dorj Narangerel, spokesperson for Mongolia’s Ministry of Health, he had died after contracting it from hunting Marmots. Tests confirmed the teenager had contracted bubonic plague and authorities imposed quarantine measures in the Tugrug district of Gobi-Altai province.
Following this, the region has been kept under quarantine, to prevent the spread of the disease. Authorities have already isolated 15 people who came into contact with the teenager. All of them are healthy.
Marmots are large ground squirrels, a type of rodent, that have historically been linked to plague outbreaks in the region. This rodent has the capability of spreading this plague, which was dubbed the ‘black death’ in the Middle Ages. The plague killed an estimated 50 million people in Europe during the Black Death pandemic in the Middle Ages, but modern antibiotics can prevent complications and death if administered quickly enough. Bubonic plague, which is one of the plague’s three forms, causes painful, swollen lymph nodes, as well as fever, chills, and coughing.
Earlier this month, two brothers from Eastern Mongolia were reported to have contracted this plague from the same rodent.This prompted the neighbouring country of Russia to issue an alert regarding the same. Mongolia has recorded 692 cases of marmot plague from 1928 to 2018. Of those, 513 died of the disease, equivalent to a mortality rate of just over 74%.
China too issued a nationwide bubonic plague alert earlier in July following a case in the Northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the country.
Source: CNN