Just when you thought we had seen it all.
Published earlier today in the Daily Mail. It popped up on a news feed. WOW.
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Plague kills second victim in China as patient dies in Mongolian city
Kate Dennett and Billie Thomson For Mailonline
9 hrs ago
A patient in northern China has died of the plague in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region - the second death from the disease in the last week.
The victim died from multiple organ failure in a case of the bubonic plague on Friday, the Bayannao'er city health commission said on its website.
This comes after China's Inner Mongolia region saw another death from the plague in Baotou last week, leading the city to issue level-three epidemic warnings.
Following Friday's death in Bayannao'er, or Bayannur, the area where the deceased lived has been sealed off, the commission confirmed.
It added that seven close contacts were placed under medical observation, but all tested negative for the plague and showed no symptoms.
On Thursday, the Baotou city health commission confirmed another person died of a different form of the disease four days earlier.
The city of Baotou, in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, said the victim had contracted the enteric plague.
The unidentified individual died on Sunday after suffering circulatory system failure, the Baotou Health Committee said in a
statement on Thursday.
The fatality occurred at the Suji Estate at the town of Shibao in Darhan Muminggan United Banner, near the Chinese border with Mongolia.
Officials ordered the city to enter a precautionary warning period, which is set to last until the end of the year.
Authorities isolated nine people who had had close contact with the deceased, as well as 26 respective close contacts.
All of the 35 quarantined residents were sent to isolation camps, given precautionary drugs and taken polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which detect the bacterium that causes plague.
None of them had a fever, and all their test results were negative, the statement said.
Officials locked down Suji Estate to prevent the spread of the disease.
The government admitted that the city was facing a potential epidemic of plague among humans.
Authorities said they had carried out door-to-door health checks for the locals and increased the intensity of anti-epidemic education.
They added that workers were thoroughly disinfecting the home of the deceased as well as the surrounding farmhouses daily.
Officials have also launched a campaign to kill fleas and rodents.
None of the residents in Suji had a fever or tested positive for plague, the notice said.
The news comes as the northern Chinese region detected a case of bubonic plague last month.
A herdsman from Bayan Nur in Inner Mongolia was confirmed on July 4 to have the disease, known as the 'Black Death' in the Middle Ages.
The bubonic plague, one of the four forms of the disease, is one of the most devastating diseases in history.
The enteric plague, also known as the pharyngeal plague, attacks a person's digestive system and can arise as a result of exposure to infectious aerosols or by ingestion of infected meat.
The other forms of the disease are the pneumonic plague, a severe lung infection, and the septicemic plague, which affects a person's blood systems.
China has largely eradicated the plague, but occasional cases are still reported.
The last major known outbreak of the disease was in 2009, when several people died in the town of Ziketan in Qinghai province on the Tibetan Plateau.
