Rare Form of Plague Kills Person in Arizona

A person has died from pneumonic plague—described by the Cleveland Clinic as the "least common and most dangerous type of plague"—in northern Arizona. In a statement, Northern Arizona Healthcare said the person showed up at the Flagstaff Medical Center Emergency Department and died there on the same day they sought treatment, the Arizona Republic. Coconino County authorities did not disclose the person's name, age, gender, or the date the death occurred, but they said Friday that testing had confirmed it was the county's first death from pneumonic plague since 2007, reports NBC News.

Pneumonic plague is one of three types of plague, all caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Pneumonic plague affects the lungs, while bubonic plague infects the lymph nodes and septicemic plague spreads through a person's blood. The CDC says around seven cases of plague are reported in the US every year, mainly in the West, and there were 15 plague deaths between 2000 and 2023. Coconino County officials say a recent die-off of prairie dogs may have been caused by plague. They say there is no link between the die-off and the county resident's death, but they urge people to report sudden die-offs of rodents or rabbits.

The CDC says the plague normally spreads to people through fleas that have bitten infected animals. With pneumonic plague, people are sometimes infected by handling infected animals. There hasn't been a case of person-to-person transmission in the US for more than a century. "Person-to-person spread has not been documented in the United States since 1924, but there continue to be rare cases of pneumonic plague among people exposed to sick cats," a CDC fact page says. "Cats are particularly susceptible to plague and can be infected by eating infected rodents."