The warning will remain in effect until the end of the year, according to Xinhua.
Plague, caused by bacteria and transmitted through flea bites and infected animals, is one of the deadliest bacterial infections in human history. During the Black Death in the Middle Ages, it killed over 50 million people in Europe.
Bubonic plague, which is one of the three forms of plague, causes painful and swollen lymph nodes, as well as fever, chills, and cough.
Bayannur health authorities now urge people to take additional precautions to minimize the risk of person-to-person transmission and to avoid hunting or eating animals that may cause infection.
Bayannur authorities have warned the public to report findings of dead or diseased groundhogs, a type of large ground squirrel that is eaten in parts of China and neighboring country Mongolia, and which have historically caused outbreaks of plague in the region.
The groundhog is believed to have caused the 1911 pneumonic plague epidemic, which killed some 63,000 people in northeast China. He was hunted for his fur, which shot up in popularity among international merchants. The diseased skin products were marketed and transported across the country, infecting thousands along the way.
Why is the plague still a thing?
The advent of antibiotics, which can treat most infections if caught early enough, has helped stem plague outbreaks, preventing the type of witness from spreading rapidly in Europe in the Middle Ages.
But although modern medicine can treat plague, it has not completely eliminated it, and it has recently returned, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to classify it as a reemerging disease.
According to the WHO, between 1,000 and 2,000 people contract the plague each year. But that total is probably too modest an estimate, since it doesn’t account for unreported cases.
The three most endemic countries, which means that the plague exists there permanently, are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar and Peru.
In the United States, there have been anywhere from a few to a dozen cases of plague each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2015, two people in Colorado died from the plague, and the previous year there were eight cases reported in the state.
Currently, there is no effective vaccine against plague, but modern antibiotics can prevent complications and death if administered quickly enough. Untreated bubonic plague can develop into pneumonic plague, which causes rapidly developing pneumonia after bacteria spread to the lungs.
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