A 15-year-old Mongolian boy has died of bubonic plague, mere hours before a squirrel in Colorado tested positive for the disease.
It's believed the unnamed teenager contracted the plague, also known as Black Death, after consuming the meat of a marmot - a large ground squirrel.
According to the Daily Mail, dozens of people are currently in isolation after coming into close contact with the boy, who died in the western Mongolian province of Govi-Altai. A lockdown has reportedly been imposed in a number of districts.
Following reports of the 15-year-old's death, Jefferson County health officials in Colorado declared a squirrel, discovered in the Morrison municipality, as the county's first case of plague.
A Morrison resident reported seeing at least 15 dead squirrels around the town, according to a Jefferson County Public Health spokesperson. Speaking to CBS, the spokesperson said that as one squirrel has returned a positive Black Death result, others are expected to be infected.
In a statement, local health officials warned that bubonic plague can be contracted by both humans and household animals. Humans can become sick through flea bites, an infected animal's cough, or direct contact with the blood or tissue of an infected animal.
Cats are particularly susceptible to the plague, according to the statement, and can contract the disease from flea bites, rodent bites or scratches or ingesting a rodent. Dogs are not as vulnerable to the illness but may carry infected fleas.
The statement noted that the risk of contracting Black Death is "extremely low" as long as precautions are taken, including vet consultations regarding appropriate flea and tick control, eliminating sources of food and shelter for wild animals and avoiding sick or deceased wild animals and rodents.
Symptoms of bubonic plague include the sudden onset of chills, headache, high fever, nausea and extremely painful and swollen lymph nodes. Symptoms may present within two to seven days after exposure to the Yersinia pestis bacteria.
Two cases of bubonic plague were recently confirmed in the neighbouring Khovd province, according to the Daily Mail. Two brothers, aged 27 and 17, are reported to have the disease.
Mongolian health officials are now urging people not to hunt or consume marmots amid growing concerns of a possible outbreak.
Health officials in China also announced a suspected case of the plague was hospitalised last week in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Authorities in the Bayannur district raised a third-level alert, the second lowest in a four-level system, Reuters reports.
The alert forbids eating and hunting animals that could carry plague, and requests the public to report any suspected cases of plague or fever with no clear causes and any sick or dead marmots.
The bubonic plague is responsible for millions of deaths throughout the Middle Ages, with up to 200 million people succumbing to Black Death throughout the 14th century. Outbreaks have occurred in the centuries since, including the Great Plague of London in the 1600s.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say modern antibiotics are effective in treating the disease, which can be deadly in up to 90 percent of those infected.
According to the CDC, human plague infections continue to be recorded in rural areas in the western US, but significantly higher rates of the disease are seen in areas of Africa and Asia.
