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Plague has been found in animals and fleas in six counties in Colorado after a 10-year-old girl died in early July from a rare bacterial infection, the Department of Public Health and Environment said. from Colorado.
The unnamed fourth-grade student who was infected was a member of the 4-H Weaselskin Club and raised pigs as part of the program. The case marked the first death from plague in the state since 2015 and the second confirmed incidence of plague in Colorado this year.
Plague activity has so far been identified in the counties of San Miguel, El Paso, Boulder, Huerfano, Adams and La Plata, where the death has occurred, AnneMarie Harper, spokesperson for the Division of Control of illnesses and the Colorado Department of Public Health Health Response, confirmed to The Daily Beast. In May, a squirrel in El Paso County, Colorado tested positive for plague. Two people in the state were infected with plague last year after coming into close contact with sick animals but survived, according to the Denver Post. In the United States, there were five cases of plague in the United States in 2020, with one death.
Formerly known as the “black plague,” the plague killed millions of people in the Middle Ages. If left untreated, plague, which is transmitted primarily in the western United States by infected rodents, usually prairie dogs, and the fleas that live on it, can lead to serious illness or death. About 85 percent of human plague cases are transmitted through flea bites, although domestic cats that roam outdoors can bring infected fleas indoors. Dogs do not directly transmit plague, according to Colorado’s Tri-County Health Department, which warns that “other sources of infection include skinning or handling infected rodents and animals such as squirrels, rabbits. and coyotes. “
Modern antibiotics are effective in treating plague, and it’s not a cause of widespread panic, say experts, who equate the chances of catching the plague in the United States somewhere with being bitten by it. a shark while taking an occasional bath.
The “old homeland” of the plague is Central Asia, particularly on the Qinghai Plateau of present-day China, according to Susan Jones, professor at the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota, specializing in ecology disease history. Humans then spread the plague along the Silk Road and into Europe, eventually bringing it around the world via clandestine rats on board ships.
“The plague first appeared in the United States, to our knowledge, on a ship in the port of San Francisco, around 1900,” Jones told the Daily Beast. “And it spread from the city of San Francisco through rats infected in the city and then in contact with wild animals in counties outside of San Francisco – California ground squirrels were the right kind of.” ecological rodent host for the plague bacillus. And it was the fleas they both shared that spread it between them.
There are several different manifestations of the plague and about seven or eight plague-related deaths each year in the United States, Jones explained, describing the recent Colorado case as part of a normal level of plague infections seen each year. year. The most common form in animals and humans is bubonic plague, which lives in the lymph nodes and directly attacks the immune system, she said, adding that if a person started a course of antibiotics within 48 hours after the onset of symptoms, she was winning. nothing to worry about.
“But the thing is, when you start showing symptoms, you’ll have a little cough, you’ll have a fever – what does that mean it’s not the flu, or COVID, or 500 other things? Jones continued. “It’s not very precise until the lymph nodes start to swell. This is why people can still die from the plague, because by the time the lymph nodes really start to swell, especially in children, the bacteria will have spread and multiplied throughout the body.
Things can get dire if a case of plague infects a victim’s lungs, a disease known as pulmonary plague, which accounts for about 10 percent of all plague cases in the United States. In this case, the disease spreads through the air and can spread from person to person by coughing and could lead to an epidemic. However, Jones said: “We never really had that in this country except for a few isolated incidents around 1900 in port cities like San Francisco, but they were able to contain it.”
Although untreated pulmonary plague is almost always fatal, the last known case of human-to-human transmission of pulmonary plague occurred in 1924, according to the Tri-County Health Department. And to date, the plague has not crossed the Mississippi River in appreciable numbers, “largely because the ecology is not good,” Jones said. “You need the right kind of animal and flea communities in the wild to keep this disease going.” (Madagascar is a place where there are still significant plague epidemics.)
Hunters, hikers, and anyone potentially in contact with wildlife in parts of the United States can stay safe by taking a few common-sense precautions, according to Jones: wear long pants and closed-toe shoes, and spray your feet and your insect legs. repellent containing DEET. If you have a cat, keep it indoors.
“Where in the spectrum of scary things?” Jones said. “Good over there, because it’s so rare. At this time, if you are worried about an illness, [COVID] is the one to be sure you take action for.
It’s not uncommon for a small handful of plague cases to appear each season, and the chances of getting sick are incredibly slim, said Jyl Matson, professor of microbiology at the University of Toledo. Matson did his doctoral thesis on plague while studying in North Dakota and was aware of the prairie dog colonies in the surrounding area. She understood this to be a factor and said people who hunt prairie dogs or interact with them should consider themselves at higher risk for plague.
That is, it’s not a concern for the vast majority of Americans, Matson told the Daily Beast.
“For your average person who is not in touch with these things, this is a nonexistent [issue], “she said.” Because it is very unlikely that you will be bitten by a random flea that is carrying the plague. “
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