Updated June 19, 2000

A reported case of the plague in Southern Utah may turn out to not be the plague, after all.

A seven-year-old Millard County girl was hospitalized with bubonic plague-like symptoms. But preliminary blood tests were not conclusive, and don't confirm the girl suffered from the plague. Also, no dead rodents were found.

Centers for Disease Control teams are still in Washington and Garfield Counties investigating whether there is a plague epidemic among rodents there.

Results are expected by the end of the week.

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Health Dept. Press Release

June 15, 2000

A new battle against a very old and very dangerous disease.

The bubonic plague killed millions in the Middle Ages, and now health investigators in Utah are tracking the source of the latest case of the disease in a Southern Utah man.

Science Specialist Ed Yeates reports.

The plague, or black death as it was called in the Middle Ages, was frightening. But in our time, a case of human plague is a rare event. And even when it happens, it's curable now.

Health officials say a middle-aged man from Washington County was recently treated for the first case of human plague in Utah in five years. The man apparently got the disease from infected fleas.

With two cases of Hantavirus this year, and now the first human plague case in five years in Utah, State Health is gowning up to join forces with the CDC and the Southwest Health District.

Epidemiologists will collect fleas and blood samples from rodents in the area, especially squirrels and prairie dogs.

This latest case in Washington County, septicemic plague, involved what might have been contact with fleas from dead rodents inside a barn.

Craig Nichols / State Epidemiologist: "HE WAS IN A BARN WHERE HE SAW DEAD RODENTS. THE HISTORY WE HAVE SO FAR DOESN'T SAY HE WAS BITTEN BY FLEAS, BUT WE THINK THAT WAS THE LIKELY ROUTE OF TRANSMISSION."

If so, it was a flea gorged with blood from a dead rodent infected with the plague, which passed it on to the man.

The last case of human plague in Utah was in 1994 when a 15-year-old girl was infected by her cat which had apparently fed on a dead rodent. Though she had penumonic plague, which is more contagious from human to human, she recovered. Nobody else was infected.

The Washington County man has also recovered from his plague and has now been released from the hospital.

Since plague in rodents is common in Utah and more people may be outdoors this year, State Health is offering some precautions.

Don't take your pets camping with you unless they're wearing a flea collar and you've dusted them with flea powder.

Don't set up your tent near rodent burrows.

Don't touch rodents dead or alive.

Other advice:

Craig Nichols: "WE ALSO RECOMMEND LONG PANTS. TUCK THEM INTO YOUR SOCKS, AND USE AN INSECT REPELLENT ON YOUR LEGS AS WELL AS YOUR ARMS TO KEEP THE FLEAS FROM BITING YOU."