Health officials in Colorado are investigating a human case of plague, a rare disease more associated with the Middle Ages than modern-day America.
Neither the Colorado nor the Pueblo County health department has provided details about when the person was tested, who they are, how they contracted plague or their current condition.
An average of seven people in the U.S. each year contract the plague, which is spread by infected fleas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Plague is most often detected in people in two regions: northern New Mexico, Arizona and southern Colorado, and California, southern Oregon and far western Nevada.
People can catch the plague by interacting with infected rodents, by being bitten by an infected flea or by inhaling plague droplets from an infected animal or person. The plague bacterium caused the 14th-century Black Death pandemic, which killed millions of people across Asia, Europe and North Africa.
Symptoms include swollen lymph nodes, muscle aches, severe headache, fever and chills, and vomiting.
“If you develop symptoms of plague, see a health care provider immediately. Plague can be treated successfully with antibiotics, but an infected person must be treated promptly to avoid serious complications or death,” Alicia Solis, the program manager for the Office of Communicable Disease and Emergency Preparedness in the Pueblo County Department of Health and Environment, told local outlets.
The department recommends that people not let pets into their beds, clear places in and around their homes where rodents could hide or find shelter, avoid contact with dead animals, use insect spray to repel fleas, treat dogs and cats for fleas regularly and not let pets go into places like prairie dog colonies.
Prairie dogs have been hit hard by plague. Last month, officials at Badlands National Park in South Dakota said that plague was responsible for a large die-off of prairie dogs in the park.