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Thousands of people have been infected with bacteria in China and their tests have come back positive, CNN reported.
The infection began last year when a leak occurred at a pharmaceutical plant. The Lanzhou City Health Commission has acknowledged that 3,245 people have tested positive for brucellosis so far.
The preliminary result of another 1401 people is positive. Up to this point Nearly 22,000 people have been screened in the city of 2.9 million people, and no deaths have yet been reported.
The infection is rarely spread from person to person, more often than contaminated milk or food spreads the bacteria. In this case, it infected the workers in the form of gas. It was assumed that they could have contracted the infection in late July or August.
The company produced biological drugs, including a brucellosis vaccine for animals. During the production process, the pharmaceutical company used expired disinfectants, so not all bacteria were destroyed in the waste gas. This damp, evaporative aerosol from waste rubbed off on workers when they inhaled it, and the wind carried it through the humid air, spreading throughout the city.
A month after the infection, an investigation was launched, but the preparations were only remembered in January this year.
The disease, known as Maltese fever in Europe, is insidious because its initial symptoms are so mild that it can be easily ignored. For weeks the patient feels only anorexia, sweating, headache, agitation, recurrent fever. The disease can last for years, over time. The lymph nodes, spleen, and, less commonly, the liver may become enlarged.
Without treatment, long-term disease leads to bone and joint damage, and even as a complication of a variety of serious, life-threatening heart conditions.
The disease is also well known in Europe and the United States. The last time a major epidemic broke out on our continent was in 2008, in Bosnia.
In the United States, the state spends millions of dollars to fight brucellosis. According to official statistics from Yellowstone National Park, sixty percent of the bison that live there are carriers of the bacteria.
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