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According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) official, the bubonic plague outbreak that erupted in China in June is “well managed” and should not be considered a potential threat of snowballing into a pandemic, as per a Reuters report.
Local authorities in the city of Bayan Nur in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia notified citizens on Sunday, one day after a hospital reported a case of suspected bubonic plague.
The notification stated that it followed four reported cases of plague in people there last November, including two of pneumonic plague, a deadlier variant.
“We are monitoring the outbreaks in China; we are watching that closely and in partnership with the Chinese authorities and Mongolian authorities,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a UN press briefing in Geneva.
“At the moment we are not...considering it high-risk but we are watching it, monitoring it carefully,” she added.
The bubonic plague, known as the “Black Death” in the Middle Ages, is a highly infectious and often fatal disease that is spread mostly by rodents.
Plague cases are not uncommon in China, but outbreaks have become increasingly rare. From 2009 to 2018, China reported 26 cases and 11 deaths.
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