An elderly Utah man died after contracting bubonic plague. This is the fourth death due to the disease reported in the United States this year.
Officials are still trying to determine how the man, said to be in his 70s, caught the disease, but believe he caught it either from a flea bite or through contact with a dead animal, according to the Utah Department of Health. The man had been hospitalized for about 5 days after coming down with symptoms of plague and died in mid-August. Members of his family have not reported symptoms and the incubation period for the disease has ended, which means they have probably not caught it.
Plague, although rare, occurs naturally in the Western and Southwestern United States. Anywhere between one and 17 cases of plague were reported each year in the United States since 2000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No more than two deaths have occurred in any given year since then. There have been 11 other cases of plague in six states since April 1. The other three people who died this year were ages 16, 52 and 79.
A few of the 11 other cases of plague this year were in people who had visited Yosemite National Park in California.
The last human case of plague in Utah was in 2009, but a spokesperson for the Utah Health Department spokeswoman said no deaths from plague have been recorded in the state in at least 35 years.
The increase in deaths this year is not cause for alarm, according to Dr. Paul Mead, a chief of epidemiology with the CDC's office in Fort Collins, CO. "Yes, it's twice as many, but when you're dealing with small numbers, you have that kind of variation," he said to the Associated Press.
The disease is carried by rodents and spread from rodents to humans by fleas. Human cases of plague often occur in areas where wild rodent populations are near campsites and homes. Transmission between people is rare. In Utah, it can be carried by prairie dogs. An outbreak of bubonic plague killed 60 to 80 prairie dogs in an eastern Utah colony in July.