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The Chinese authorities discovered several thousand new bacterial infections, following a leak in a plant belonging to a vital medicine company in the northwest of the country.
According to a report by the US network “CNN”, the Health Committee of Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, confirmed that 3,245 people had contracted brucellosis, which is often caused by contact with cattle carrying the bacteria.
The City Health Commission stated that another 1,401 people initially tested positive, though no deaths were reported.
In total, authorities examined 21,847 people out of the city’s 2.9 million residents.
The disease, also known as Maltese fever or Mediterranean fever, can cause symptoms including headache, muscle aches, fever, and fatigue, and these symptoms can become chronic.
Person-to-person transmission is extremely rare, but most people become infected by eating contaminated food or by entering bacteria through their breath.
The outbreak was caused by a leak at the Lanzhou Zhongmu Biological Medicines Plant that occurred between late July and late August last year.
During the production of brucella vaccines for animal use, the aforementioned factory used expired disinfectants, which means that not all bacteria were removed from the waste gas, until the contaminated waste gas form was an aerosol containing bacteria, and a leak in the air, which was carried by the winds to the institute. Lanzhou Veterinary Research, where the first outbreak started.
