Stock photo of a squirrel peeking out from a tree.
Matt Jonas | MediaNews Group | Boulder Daily Camera | fake pictures
A squirrel in Colorado tested positive for the bubonic plague, also known as the “Black Death,” according to local health authorities.
The squirrel was found in a city in Jefferson County, which is west of Denver, and is the first case in the region, health authorities said in a statement released Sunday.
The case comes about a week after authorities in a city in China’s Inner Mongolia region issued a warning after a hospital reported a case of suspected bubonic plague in a human. There were at least four reported cases of plague in people from Inner Mongolia late last year, according to the New York Times. Two of them were pneumonic plague, a more deadly variant of plague.
The bubonic plague, infamous for killing millions of people in Europe during the Middle Ages, is an often deadly disease caused by bacteria. Humans are usually spread after being bitten by a rodent flea that carries the plague bacteria or by handling a plague-infected animal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Symptoms may include high fever, chills, headache, nausea, and extreme pain and swelling of the lymph nodes. The disease can cause serious illness or death without proper treatment, according to the CDC. Antibiotics are effective in treating it.
The plague is found on most continents, but most human cases since the 1990s have occurred in Africa, according to the World Health Organization.
Local authorities in Colorado are asking residents to take precautions, including avoiding contact with sick or dead wild animals and rodents, and preventing pets from freely roaming outside. Cats are very susceptible to plague and can die if not immediately treated with antibiotics, they said.
The new case comes as the world continues to fight Covid-19, another serious illness that emerged six months ago. As of Tuesday, the virus has infected more than 13 million people worldwide and has killed at least 573,200, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, compared it to the 1918 pandemic flu, which killed about 50 million people, according to the CDC.
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