Chinese city sounds alert for bubonic plague amid worldwide Corona crisis

Guwahati: Months after a coronavirus outbreak was first reported in the animal markets of Wuhan, a city in northern China on Sunday, sounded an alert after a suspected case of bubonic plague was reported.

People's Daily Online run by the Chinese Government announced that level III warning of plague prevention and control has been sounded in Bayannur, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The suspected case was reported on Saturday by a hospital in the city, and the warning period will continue till the end of 2020, local authorities said.

The local health authority has said that there is a threat of a human plague epidemic spreading in Bayannur and the public has been urged to protect its self-protection awareness and ability and also report "abnormal" health conditions at the earliest.

At the same time, the state-run Xinhua news agency said that two suspected cases of bubonic plague reported in Khovd province in western Mongolia have been confirmed after laboratory tests were conducted. The agency further reported that the confirmed cases are a 27-year-old resident and his brother who are being treated in separate hospitals. According to reports, the brothers ate marmot meat, and locals have been urged not to gorge on the animal's meat to minimize chances of getting sick.

Narangerel reports that 146 people who had contact with the brothers have been isolated and treated at local hospitals, according to Narangerel.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines the Bubonic plague as a bacterial disease that is spread by fleas living on wild rodents such as marmots which can kill an adult in less than 24 hours if not treated in time. Notably, a couple died of bubonic plague in the western Mongolian province of Bayan-Ulgii in 2019 after eating raw marmot meat.

Meanwhile, China is grappling with a second wave of the COVID-19, which has been controlled in Wuhan where it originally broke out. 

The number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases reached a peak in the capital city of Beijing on June 13 and 14, and then started declining in general, Xinhua quoted local officials as saying. From June 11 to July 4, the city reported 334 confirmed locally transmitted cases, 47 percent of whom are workers of the Xinfadi wholesale food market.

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