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."
