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Prairie dogs riddled with plague are forcing authorities to close areas of the Colorado State, including sections of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.
The areas of Denver Open Space, a suburb of Denver Commerce Commerce and First Creek, will remain closed until the first weekend of September (or Labor Day weekend) to give the authorities time to deal with holes of prairie dogs with an insecticide. The chemicals should kill all the fleas that can be infected by the bacteria that causes the plague Yersinia pestis.
Although the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge reopened after a temporary closure on August 17, some areas (including some trails and parking lots) will remain closed, the Tri-County Health Department said in a statement.
"Prairie dog colonies are monitored and burrows are treated with insecticide, but there is still evidence of fleas in hiking and camping areas, which could put people and pets at risk, so these areas will remain closed, "said John M Douglas, executive director of the Tri-County Health Department.
The plague could result in images of beak masks, open tombs and abandoned medieval villages. This could make you think of the history textbooks and the Justinian plague or the Black Death (the Great Plague), which has wiped out up to 60% of the European population.
So, it might be difficult to get an idea of the fact that Yersinia pestis is present in the western United States since arriving in San Francisco in the early twentieth century, at the time of the third pandemic (or modern plague).
The modern plague started in China in the 1860s and spread to Hong Kong in 1894. The bustling port city has provided the perfect springboard for transmitting disease worldwide. The resulting pandemic resulted in approximately 10 million deaths.
The largest epidemic in American cities occurred in Los Angeles from 1924 to 1925. However, while health authorities were able to control rat-associated plague, fleas carrying bacteria had already migrated to new ones. hosts. According to wildlife biologist Dean Biggins, in an interview with NPR, Yersinia pestis is relatively common in colonial populations of squirrels – a group of animals including prairie dogs.
There are about seven cases of human plague in the United States each year. Fortunately, few are fatal. The availability of antibiotics has significantly reduced mortality during the twentieth century, so that between 1990 and 2010, the death rate was reduced to 11%.
Plague can take different forms depending on how it is transmitted, but the three most common are: bubonic (which accounts for more than 80% of cases in the United States), pneumonic and septicemic.
Bubonic plague presents a set of symptoms including sudden fever, headache, chills and – more typically – swollen lymph nodes called buboes. This tends to happen if the patient is stung by an infected flea.
The septicemic plague can also develop after an injection of an infected flea or after handling an infected animal. This can lead to fever, chills, fatigue, abdominal pain, shock, internal bleeding, and darkening parts of the flesh.
Pneumonic plague is transmitted by droplets into the atmosphere (untreated bubonic or septicemic plague can also spread to the lungs) and is the most serious form of the disease. Symptoms include fever, headache, weakness and rapidly developing pneumonia accompanied by shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing and (sometimes) mucus with a bloody or watery consistency.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that anyone suspected of being infected should seek immediate medical attention. Antibiotics should be given within 24 hours of onset of symptoms to prevent a high risk of death.
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