A teenaged girl in Oregon is being treated for plague, state health officials say.
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Officials say they think the girl was bitten and infected during a hunting trip this month near Heppner, which is located in northeastern Oregon in the foothills of the Blue Mountains.
The Oregon teen who was hospitalized with bubonic plague last weekend marked the 16th reported case of the illness so far this year in the U.S.
The plague is treatable with antibiotics if caught early. Levofloxacin, an antibiotic made to treat people who have been exposed to anthrax, was also recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat the bubonic plague and has been proven effective through animal testing, according to the CDC.
An official statement from the Oregon Health Authority pointed that squirrels, chipmunks, other wild rodents, and their fleas carry the plague. They should never feed squirrels, chipmunks or other rodents in picnic or campground areas, and never tough a sick or dead rodent. But it’s important to note that most plague is spread from animal to human, not person to person.
In fact, between 2000 and 2009, over 20,000 people became infected with it-contracting the disease from eating rodents and bad camel meat or sick herding dogs, according to Live Science. Public health investigators are working in Morrow, Deschutes and Crook counties, and report that no other persons are believed to have been infected. The infection is transmitted from rodents to human through fleas infesting the rodents.
The Black Death was next, starting in 1334 in China and spreading along trade routes to Europe. Symptoms include fever, chills, headache, weakness and a cough.
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There are three types of plague: bubonic (infection of the lymph nodes), septicemic (infection of the blood), and pneumonic (infection of the lungs). Between 2000 and 2014, there have been eight reported deaths in the United States due to the bubonic plague. With treatment, mortality has been reduced to about 16 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Untreated, it is fatal in 66 percent to 93 percent of cases. Within the U.S. States, only seven cases are reported normally every year.
