Mongolia quarantines region near Russian border after outbreak of the PLAGUE
- Lab tests confirmed two individuals contracted the illness in the region of Khovd
- Vehicles have been banned from entering the area temporarily as a precaution
- Urgent checks were carried out on 146 people with whom they were in contact
Mongolia has quarantined a region near the Russian border after an outbreak of the bubonic plague.
Two suspected cases of the plague – which is linked to the consumption of marmot meat – have been identified, health experts announced on Wednesday.
Lab tests confirmed that two unidentified individuals had contracted the illness in the region of Khovd, Mongolia’s National Center for Zoonotic Disease (NCZD) said in a statement.
The provincial capital in western Mongolia, 500 kilometres south of the Siberian republics of Tyva and Altai, is now in quarantine.
According to local media, vehicles have been banned from entering the area temporarily.
Lab tests confirmed that two unidentified individuals had contracted the illness in the region of Khovd (shown on this locator map), Mongolia’s National Center for Zoonotic Disease (NCZD) said in a statement
The NCZD analysed samples from 146 different people who may have had contact with the two individuals infected.
In addition 504 second-contact individuals were identified.
The bacterial infection can kill adults within 24 hours if not treated in time, according to the World Health Organisation.
Local reports suggested that the victims were a 27-year-old male and a young woman, although her age is not known.
The plague is spread by fleas living on wild rodents such as marmots.
Two suspected cases of the black plague – which is linked to the consumption of marmot meat – have been identified, health experts announced on Wednesday. Pictured is a Mongolian marmot
It comes after a couple died of bubonic plague in the western Mongolian province of Bayan-Ulgii in April 2019, after eating raw marmot meat.
Some 158 people were put under intensive medical supervision in the province after coming into contact directly or indirectly with the couple who died.
A man named Citizen T, aged 38, died on April 27 after hunting and eating marmot meat.
His pregnant wife, 37, died three days later, reported The Siberian Times, leaving their four children orphaned.
Top medic Dr N. Tsogbadrakh said the plague had ‘affected the man’s stomach’ after he ate the meat and gave it to his wife.
The plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is usually found in small mammals and their fleas.
The bacterium was linked to the Black Death which wiped out more than a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century and to subsequent plague outbreaks.
The disease is now treatable with antibiotics but hundreds of people have died of it around the world in recent years.
Since the 1990s, most human cases have occurred in Africa, according to world health bosses.