Pneumonic virus found in China Village
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updated 10:25 a.m. PT, Mon., Aug 3, 2009
BEIJING - China locked down a remote farming town after two people died and 10 more were sickened with pneumonic plague, a lung infection that can kill a human in 24 hours if left untreated.
Police set up checkpoints around Ziketan in northwestern Qinghai province, where townspeople reached by The Associated Press by phone Monday said the streets were largely deserted and most shops shut.
Authorities urged anyone who had visited the town of 10,000 people since mid-July and has developed a cough or fever to seek hospital treatment.
On Sunday, a 37-year-old man identified only as Danzin became the second reported fatality from the outbreak. He lived next door to the first, a 32-year-old herder. The 10 sickened, mostly relatives of the herder, were undergoing isolated treatment in hospital, the local health bureau said.
Most severe form of plague
The World Health Organization office in China said it was in close contact with Chinese health authorities and that measures taken so far to treat and quarantine sickened people were appropriate. It did not comment on the move to seal off the town."This form of pneumonic plague is probably the least common but the most severe," said WHO's spokeswoman in China, Vivian Tan. "It has a very high fatality rate and generally spreads quite easily. So we're certainly concerned about the situation."
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