Chinese village quarantined after plague patient dies

Authorities in a city in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia have quarantined a village after a resident there who had caught an intestinal type of plague died, the health commission of the city said.

Cases of plague are not uncommon in China, although outbreaks have become increasingly rare. From 2009 to 2018, China reported 26 cases and 11 deaths.

Baotou city has sealed off the village where the dead patient lived and quarantined the patient’s close contacts, who have tested negative for the disease so far and taken preventive medicines, the health commission said in a statement on its website.

The city has also put the district where the village is located on the second-lowest alert level on its four-level system for plague response until the end of the year, Reuters reported.

The Baotou city health commission said the patient, who died of circulatory system failure, was confirmed to have “intestinal-type plague”, referring to a category diagnosed from symptoms including diarrhoea, severe abdominal pain and high fever, according to guidelines issued by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.