The California Department of Public Health said that the child went to the Stanislaus National Forest and camped at Crane Flat Campground in Yosemite National Park before coming down with the plague. The said disease infected the child was carried by rodents and the fleas there and the child fell ill after the camping and was hospitalized.
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The plague is caused by rodents and the fleas that live on it. Another disease called the hantavirus, which is also caused by rodents struck nine individuals in 2012, resulting in three fatalities. Crane Flat Campground has more than 150 sites with space for recreational vehicles and trailers, at least five restrooms, and an amphitheater.
Nobody else got sick or reported symptoms, public health officials said. The last known case of a human contracting the plague form another human occurred back in 1924. Yosemite National Park remains open and all other campgrounds and facilities in the park remain open as well.
State health officials, park officials, the Los Angeles County Department of Health and the CDC are all working together to identify where the child caught the plague. There are about 7 cases of plague in the U.S. every year, mostly in the West, where the disease is endemic among wild mammals, especially rodents, in rural or wilderness areas.
Early symptoms of human plague include nausea, chills, high fever, feeling of weakness, and swollen lymph nodes in the groin, neck, or armpit. As long as it’s not left untreated, several courses of antibiotics would make sure that the patient does not perish as many others have over 700 years ago. Also one should never touch the sick or dead rodents. There have been 42 confirmed human cases since 1970.
Keep wild rodents out of homes, trailers, and outbuildings and away from pets.
In Pueblo, Colorado, heath authorities declared that an adult in the area has died from the plague a day before the news of the California girl infection came about.
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In California, the last reported cases of human plague occurred in Mono, Los Angeles and Kern counties in 2005 and 2006. Since 2006 this is the first human case in California and public health officials are likely to investigate the Yosemite and Stanislaus National Forest areas to know the source of infection.
