Bubonic plague is a bacterial disease transmitted by fleas on wild rodents such as marmots. (Representative)
Beijing:
A northern Chinese city sounded the alert on Sunday after a suspected case of bubonic plague was reported, according to official media.
Bayannur, in the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia, has announced a level III plague prevention and control warning, People’s Daily Online reported.
The suspected bubonic plague case was reported on Saturday by a hospital in Bayannur. The local health authority has announced that the alert period will continue until the end of 2020.
“Currently, there is a risk of the spread of an epidemic of human plague in this city. The public should improve awareness and self-protection skills and report abnormal health conditions promptly,” said the local health authority.
On July 1, the official Xinhua news agency said that two suspected cases of bubonic plague reported in Khovd province in western Mongolia had been confirmed by laboratory test results.
The confirmed cases are a 27-year-old resident and his 17-year-old brother, who are being treated in two separate hospitals in their province, said a health official.
The brothers ate groundhog meat, said the health official, warning people not to eat groundhog meat.
According to Narangerel, a total of 146 people were isolated and treated in local hospitals.
Bubonic plague is a bacterial disease transmitted by fleas living on wild rodents such as marmots. It can kill an adult in less than 24 hours if it is not treated in time, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Last year, a couple died of bubonic plague in western Mongolia province of Bayan-Ulgii after eating raw marmot meat.
The news of bubonic plague came after Chinese researchers issued an early warning about another potential pandemic caused by an influenza virus in pigs.
Scientists from the Agricultural University of China, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutes have detected a swine flu virus with genotype 4 (G4), which is contagious in pigs and possibility of spreading to humans because the G4 virus is capable of binding to human cells, the Global Times, a public newspaper, reported last week.
Researchers fear it will mutate more so that it can spread easily from person to person and trigger a global epidemic, the BBC reported.
“The control of dominant G4 EA H1N1 viruses in pigs and close monitoring of human populations, in particular workers in the pig industry, must be implemented as a matter of urgency,” warned Chinese researchers in the document.
The new diseases have been reported even while China was facing the second COVID-19 attack in Beijing after controlling it in Wuhan where it was first reported in December of last year.
Beijing reported a single-digit COVID-19 on Saturday, local officials said on Sunday.
The number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 peaked in Beijing on June 13 and 14, and then started to decline in general, according to local officials quoted by Xinhua.
From June 11 to July 4, the city reported 334 locally transmitted confirmed cases, 47% of whom are workers in the Xinfadi wholesale food market, the official said.
