An apparent outbreak of bubonic plague in China is “well managed,” said a WHO official.
Geneva:
An apparent outbreak of bubonic plague in China is “well managed” and is not considered to be a high risk, an official with the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.
Local authorities in the city of Bayan Nur in China’s Inner Mongolia region issued a warning on Sunday, one day after a hospital reported a suspected bubonic plague. It followed four cases of plague reported in people last November, including two of pneumonic plague, a more deadly variant.
“We are monitoring the epidemics in China, we are monitoring it closely and in partnership with the Chinese and Mongolian authorities,” said WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris during a press briefing in Geneva.
“At the moment we don’t consider it to be high risk, but we are watching it and watching it carefully,” she added.
Bubonic plague, known as “black plague” in the Middle Ages, is a highly infectious and often fatal disease that is spread mainly by rodents. Cases are not uncommon in China although they are becoming increasingly rare.
(Report by Emma Farge and Stephanie Nebehay, edited by Michael Shields)
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
