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- Chipmunks carrying bubonic plague have closed large sections of Lake Tahoe.
- The areas will be off-limits to visitors while the US Forest Service treats the areas to kill infected fleas.
- The bubonic plague was the origin of the black plague pandemic, but it is now treatable and preventable.
- Visit the Insider home page for more stories.
Chipmunks with bubonic plague closed parts of Lake Tahoe in California until August 7.
The US Forest Service is preparing to carry out vector control treatments after detecting signs of plague infection in areas such as the Taylor Creek Visitor Center and Kiva Beach. These are popular spots along the shores of Lake Tahoe, known for their scenic hiking trails.
The bubonic plague was responsible for the 14th century black plague pandemic that wiped out a third of Europe. It still exists in the foothills, plateaus, and mountains of California, and is mostly found in wild rodents. People can become infected if they are bitten by infected fleas that carry plague.
El Dorado County spokeswoman Carla Hass told the Tahoe Daily Tribune that plague-infected chipmunks have no contact with people.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between one and 17 people are affected by the plague in the United States each year. But it’s now preventable and treatable, and won’t cause serious illness or death if antibiotics are given within a day of symptom onset.
“Bubonic plague occurs naturally in the Sierra Nevada mountains and this region,” Lisa Herron, spokesperson for the US Forest Service’s Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, told The Guardian.
Herron added that any “real danger” of contracting the plague comes from the fleas that rodents carry. She told the Guardian that regional authorities regularly test said rodents by combing their fur and examining any fleas they find.
Chipmunks and other rodents usually show no symptoms when carrying fleas infected with plague.
When an infection is detected, animal control steps in to attempt to eradicate the area of the infected fleas by dusting the rodent burrows with a powder, Herron said.
“It’s something visitors should take care of, but it’s not something they should be worried about,” she added.
Cases of bubonic plague in humans are extremely rare. In August last year, a South Lake Tahoe resident was the first person in five years to test positive for plague. Authorities suspected at the time that the infected person had been bitten by a flea carrying plague while walking her dog along the Truckee River corridor.
Deaths from bubonic plague are also very rare in the United States, but do occur occasionally. Last August, a man in his twenties from Arriba County, New Mexico died of plague, the first plague-related death in the state since 2015. And in July, a 10-year-old girl from Colorado was killed. died after contracting the disease. It was the first case of plague-related death in the state in six years.
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