By Jason Gale
Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Chinese officials trying to stop pneumonic plague spreading in northwestern Qinghai province have distributed more than 40,000 handbooks and other material to educate residents and prevent panic.
Authorities also quarantined a 3,500-square-kilometer (1,350-square-mile) area to contain the pneumonia-causing disease in the remote town of Ziketan, the provincial health department said in a statement today. Three people have died of the disease in the past week, one is in serious condition, one is recovering and seven others are stable, the department said.
Pneumonic plague, the most serious of three forms of the disease caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria, infects the lungs and can spread through coughing and sneezing. While improved hygiene has reduced its occurrence in China in the past decade, the germ has persisted in some areas including Qinghai, said P.L. Ho, associate professor of microbiology at Hong Kong University.
“The exact mode of transmission and why small clusters have occurred in recent years is still under investigation,” Ho, who has studied bacteria for 20 years, said in a telephone interview.
While plague can be fatal in all untreated cases, early diagnosis and treatment with generic antibiotics such as streptomycin and tetracycline cuts patients’ mortality rate to less than 15 percent, the World Health Organization said. The Geneva-based agency said it’s monitoring the situation.
Lives Are ‘Normal’
The Qinghai health department reiterated that the plague- affected area, situated northeast of Tibet, is adequately supplied with medicines and daily necessities and people’s lives are “normal.” Authorities also ordered the area to be fumigated and for all animal carcasses to be burned to prevent the spread of the disease, it said.
Residents of the farming town say people have been seeking to flee, mostly by foot, in defiance of a lockdown by authorities, the Associated Press reported yesterday.
Anyone who has visited Ziketan and the surrounding areas after July 15 and has developed a fever or a cough should seek treatment at a hospital, the health department said.
Ziketan, which has a population of about 10,000, is 144 kilometers southwest of the Qinghai provincial capital of Xining, which in turn is about a 2 1/2-hour flight west of Beijing.
Pneumonic plague is caused by the same bacterium that cause bubonic plague -- the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages. In the mid- 1800s, plague killed 12 million people in China.
Yersinia pestis bacteria are found mainly in rodents, particularly rats, and in the fleas that feed on them.
“In many parts of the world, the infection is still endemic and occurs sporadically where resources and systematic treatment is limited,” Ho said. “Attention is required because of international travel and the possibility of travelers visiting remote villages and being exposed.”
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