China: Dos muertos por peste bubónica

Según he leído, se trataría de algo mucho más peligroso que la gripe porcina, cuya letalidad es comparable a la de la gripe normal.

Ha sucedido en el Tibet, y dicen que van dos muertos. Se propaga sin contacto, por el aire y tiene varios días de incubación en los que el portador aún no doliente puede propagarla involuntariamente a muchas personas con las que entren en contatcto. Lo que faltaba para el duro.

Lo veo en Gates of Vienna, de The Times (Entire Town in Quarantine After Two Die From Pneumonic Plague in China).

An outbreak of pneumonic plague has killed two people in China and forced the lockdown of a remote town of 10,000 to halt the further spread of one of the world’s deadliest and most contagious diseases.

The first victim, a 32-year-old herdsman, fell ill a day after burying his dog, which had died suddenly. Two days later the man was dead and friends and relatives attended his funeral in the ethnically Tibetan region of Ziketan in western Qinghai province.

Of those mourners, 11 soon fell ill. One man, 37-year-old Danzin, a neighbour of the first victim, died on Sunday. Investigating the disease that had infected so many people so quickly, medical authorities soon established that all were infected with pneumonic plague.

Those infected were undergoing treatment in isolation in a local Tibetan hospital while all 10,000 residents of Ziketan were placed in quarantine to try to halt the spread of one of the deadliest diseases in history.

Pneumonic plague is spread through the air and can be passed from person to person through coughing, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). It is caused by the same bacteria that occurs in bubonic plague — the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Esto puede ser terrible.

Más: Se elevan a tres muertos por peste pulmonar en China