Bubonic plague China: What is bubonic plague | What is the recent case of plague and marmots in China?

Now authorities in a city in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia have issued a warning about bubonic plague after a hospital reported a suspected case. The alert issued by the health committee of the city of Bayan Nur on Sunday bans the hunting and eating of animals that could carry plague. According to The Guardian (UK), the Chinese authorities have issued the third-level alert, the second-lowest in a four-level system and has asked the public to report any suspected cases of plague or fever with no clear causes. It has also asked the citizens to report any sick or dead marmots.

What are Marmots?

Marmots are any of the 14 species of giant squirrels found mostly in north-central Asia, the Himalayas, Eurasia and North America. Marmots live in burrows that they excavate, and most mountain species of marmots construct burrows beneath boulder fields, rocky slopes, and crevices in cliff faces, basically to shelter themselves from aggressive attacks by grizzlies. 

Do people eat marmot meat?

The tarbagan marmot is a part of the native cuisine of Mongolia for centuries now. Mongolians cook a local dish called Bodog by inserting hot stones, preheated in a fire, into the abdominal cavity of a deboned marmot. The skin is then engaged to form a bag within which the meat cooks.

What is the connection between marmots and plague?

In late April 2019, a couple in Mongolia who consumed raw marmot meat as a folk remedy ended up contracting the plague. After consumption of marmot meat, the couple soon developed serious symptoms, including fever and, later, vomiting blood and died on May 1.

There were four reported cases of plague in people from Inner Mongolia last November, including two of pneumonic plague, a deadlier variant of plague.

Several years ago, a 10-year-old boy caught the disease while out hunting together with his grandfather within the Siberian mountains.

What is the recent case of plague and marmots in China?

What has shocked the already petrified world is the recent report of 2 Mongolian brothers having contracted the plague after reportedly eating ma that they had hunted and cooked for dinner. The two patients are aged 27 and 16, respectively and the laboratory from Mongolia’s National Center for Zoonotic Diseases has certified that they have the plague. The elder sibling is being treated with “marmot plague and secondary lung disease” and is in a “very severe condition” with “multiple organ failure” and his younger brother is also receiving treatment linked to the plague, according to the Chinese ministry of health.

Authorities in China are now racing to put in place a quarantine for the relevant areas in Khovd province as the disease is a very contagious and deadly one. Authorities have identified hundreds of people who came into first- or second-hand contact with the infected people.

The plague , referred to as the “Black Death” within the Middle Ages, may be a highly infectious and sometimes fatal disease that's spread mostly by rodents.

Why fear the Plague?

Though the plague in now better understood and treatable with potent antibiotics if it is in its early stages, it has caused havoc in the earlier centuries. The BBC reports that - the Black Death - a name given to the killer plague epidemic - caused about 50 million deaths across Africa, Asia and Europe in the 14th Century. It adds that in its last terrifying outbreak in London - the Great Plague of 1665 - the disease killed about a fifth of the city's inhabitants and in as recent as the 19th century there was a plague outbreak in China and India, which killed more than 12 million.