China has issued an alert after a case of the bubonic plague was discovered in Inner Mongolia.
Health officials in the city of Bayan Nur issued a level three alert, the second lowest in a four level system on Sunday (local time).
The alert bans hunting and eating animals that could carry plague and calls for the public to report any suspected cases.
But what is the bubonic plague and what are its symptoms?
What is the bubonic plague?
The bubonic plague is a potentially fatal disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It is mostly spread by infected animals such as rats and fleas.
Humans can catch the plague from being bitten by an infected animal or having contact with an infected animal's bodily fluids.
People can also get infected from contact with the dead body of an infected person.
Historically the plague was known as The Black Death because it turns body parts such as fingers and toes black from gangrene.
What are the symptoms?
Seven days after exposure people generally develop flu-like symptoms such as fever, headaches, and vomiting. Swollen and painful lymph nodes will also appear at the bite mark which can break open.
Other symptoms include chills, seizures, muscle cramps, heavy breathing, continuous vomiting of blood, aching limbs, coughing, and extreme pain.
If caught early it can be treated with antibiotics but if left untreated can cause complications or death.
The bubonic plague is the most common form of plague but two other forms exist called the septicemic plague and pneumonic plague.
How deadly is the bubonic plague?
It is hard to know exactly how deadly the bubonic plague is. Before antibiotics the fatality rate was as high as 60 percent however, modern medicine has seen that drop to between 8-11 percent.
It is not known exactly how many people have died from the bubonic plague but during one of history's most well known pandemics in 1347-1351 it killed between 75 million and 200 million people, or around 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population.
Another outbreak in 1665-1666 in London killed 100,000 people.
Thankfully since then most outbreaks have been small with China reporting a handful of cases from 2009 to 2018.
