China seals town after plague deaths

Virulent, rare disease

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Biology, 3rd August 2009 17:31 GMT

Chinese health officials have sealed off a town in a sparsely populated area of north-central China to halt the spread of an aggressively deadly strain of plague.

As of Sunday, two men have died from the outbreak, and another 10 - most of them relatives of the first dead man - are under quarantine.

The disease is pneumonic plague, which the World Health Organization refers to as "the most virulent and least common form of plague." Pneumonic plague is a variant of the bubonic plaque - the Black Death - that killed an estimated 75 to 100 million people worldwide in the mid-1300s.

Bubonic plague is spread by flea bites, but pneumonic plague needs no third-party vector. It is spread simply by inhaling the Yersinia pestis bacteria after it has been made airborne by an infected person's cough.

Untreated, pneumonic plague can kill in a day, with a mortality rate that "approaches 100 per cent," according to an article published by two American clinicians. Early and aggressive treatment with antibiotics can, however, reduce that death rate significantly.

None of the 10 under strict quarantine have shown signs of the disease, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency, which reported the first death on Saturday. They are, however, being kept under watch due to their association with the dead.

The two deaths from the current outbreak have occurred in the town of Ziketan in Qinghai province. Ziketan is huge: 3,000 square kilometers, according to Xinhua - over 1,150 square miles. Ziketan is in the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and it has a population that's over 60 per cent ethnic Tibetan and just under 30 per cent Han Chinese.

Xinhua reported that a press release from Health Bureau of Qinghai Province claimed that they had sent a "team of experts to the area [that] had the plague under control" and that "the area has sufficient supplies and the quarantine has not disrupted the basic needs of the locals."

The Associated Press spoke by phone with a food seller in Ziketan who said, "People are so scared. There are few people on the streets. There are police guarding the quarantine center at the township hospital but not on the streets."

The man, named Han, said that authorities had instructed people to disinfect their homes and shops and wear masks if they needed to go out.

Han also said that some 80 per cent of shops in the town had been closed - and that the "prices of disinfectants and some vegetables have tripled." ®

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Plague death toll rises in China


A third man has died of pneumonic plague in north-western China where a town of more than 10,000 people has been sealed off, officials say.

The 64-year-old man was a neighbour of the first two people to die from the plague in Ziketan in Qinghai Province.

Police have set up checkpoints around Ziketan, as medics are disinfecting the area and killing rats and insects.

Pneumonic plague, which attacks the lungs, can spread from person to person or from animals to people.

WHO watching China plague cases 'closely'

A spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, Vivian Tan, earlier said an outbreak such as this was always a concern, but praised the Chinese for reacting quickly and for getting the situation under control.

A BBC correspondent in Beijing, Michael Bristow, says that unlike in the past the authorities are being very open about this outbreak.


Local officials in north-western China have told the BBC that the situation is under control, and that schools and offices are open as usual.

But to prevent the plague spreading, the authorities have sealed off Ziketan.

About 10 other people inside the town have so far contracted the disease, according to state media.

No-one is being allowed leave the area, and the authorities are trying to track down people who had contact with the men who died.

Initial symptoms of pneumonic plague include fever, headache and shortness of breath.

The local health bureau has warned anyone with a cough or fever who has visited the town since mid-July to seek medical treatment.
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