If you think the Plague is something of our ancestors’ medieval past, think again. It has been confirmed that a 16-year-old New Mexico boy is suffering from the first confirmed case of the Plague of 2016. Officials state that the boy is thankfully recovering and that they will be informing those in his neighborhood of the potential risks and symptoms of this poorly understood illness.
If you plan on visiting Lake Tahoe (a large freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada of the U.S.) anytime in the near future, you might want to make sure you’re thoroughly covered up and wearing some sort of natural insect repellent. A flea from a yellow chipmunk in the area tested positive for plague, the U.S. Forest Service announced June 6.
A tiny flea, so small that most people wouldn’t notice the bug unless they were looking for it, bit a 16-year-old girl who was on a hunting trip in Oregon, giving her a rare case of bubonic plague.
The CDC is urging doctors to consider a diagnosis of the plague if a patient presents with fever, abdominal pain, and nausea and vomiting, especially if the individual has recently visited the Western United States or are residents of the region.
Since April, 11 people have been diagnosed with the human plague – an unusually high number, considering between 2001 and 2012, the annual number of cases of the disease reported in the U.S. ranged from one to 17, the CDC said in a statement. The median number of annual plague cases across the past decade had been three. [1]
The U.S. went a decade without any cases of the plague, but this summer the illness has made headlines after several people contracted the disease while visiting Yosemite National Park.
On August 18, California officials announced that they were looking into a case of plague in a Georgia resident who visited the park this month. The patient is presumed to have the plague, but the CDC has not yet confirmed the case. [1]
Last month, a Los Angeles county girl was also diagnosed with plague after visiting Yosemite. Health officials say she is recovering.
This recent headline is concerning on the face of it, but how serious really is the potential for the spread of the plague? Actually the plague has been around practically forever with cases usually occurring between late Spring and early Fall. The states of Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico are the only three that produce cases due to flea bites. The Colorado teen Taylor Thomas Gaes likely contracted the plague from a flea bite.
