Mongolia declared quarantine due to plague outbreak: sick people ate groundhog meat
'02.07.2020'
Source: New Time
Quarantine measures were announced in two districts of aimak (region) Khovd in western Mongolia after reports of an outbreak of bubonic plague, reports New Time.
Quarantine began at 10:00 on June 29 and will last, as local officials assure, "an indefinite period."
According to the National Center for Zoonoses (NZZ), a 27-year-old resident of the Tsetseg district in aimak Hovd was taken to a local hospital on Sunday after eating raw groundhog meat.
A young woman who also ate meat is being treated and is in critical condition.
It appears that she was in direct contact with more than 60 people and indirectly with more than 400 residents of the area
Note that in the neighboring western Mongolian aimak Bayan-Yolgy in April 2019, the couple died of the bubonic plague shortly after eating raw groundhog meat. A 38-year-old man and a 37-year-old pregnant woman became infected by eating groundhog meat, despite the current ban. The spouses left four children aged two to 13 years.
On the subject: 'Poisonous air': how ignorance and prejudice helped the plague destroy millions of people
We add, according to WHO, bubonic plague is the most common form of plague in the world. It can go into a more severe form - pulmonary. Both forms of the disease cause the same pathogen.
The bubonic plague got its name due to the development in the process of the disease of buboes - inflamed inguinal or axillary lymph nodes that look like huge corns or blisters.
The bacterium Yersinia pesti, which is the causative agent of plague, is transmitted from animals (mainly rats, but in recent years - from marmots) to humans through the bite of an infected flea, as a result of unprotected contact with infected tissues and by airborne droplets. That is, the plague spreads not through the marmots themselves, but through fleas.
According to the WHO, in 2010-2015, 3248 cases of plague were recorded worldwide, including 584 fatal cases.
At the end of 2019, in the autonomous province of China, Inner Mongolia, a case of plague was recorded, which became the third in the country in a month. The regional health commission confirmed the diagnosis. It is reported that a 55-year-old man fell ill with bubonic plague after eating wild rabbit meat on November 5.
