Onishchenko warned Russians about plague outbreak in neighboring country
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“There will be no shocks and closure of regions”
According to the Ministry of Health of Mongolia, 137 natural foci of plague have already been identified in a dozen and a half regions of the country, including those bordering Russia. And according to the National Center for Zoonotic Infections of Mongolia, one case of human disease was registered – he was admitted to a local hospital in critical condition.
How to prevent a medieval infection in Russia? How secure are our borders? How is the plague transmitted and what is the danger it poses today?
Rospotrebnadzor reassures the Russians: the territory where the case of the disease was recorded borders on China and is located at a distance of more than 500 km from the Russian border. Therefore, the risk of importing the disease is excluded from here. At the same time, Mongolian epidemiologists have already taken all measures to prevent the spread of infection. According to the epidemiological investigation, the case of the disease is associated with the consumption of infected meat from a marmot that lived in the natural focus of the plague. The region has been put on high alert for six days.
Rospotrebnadzor published a decree on the prevention of plague in the territory of the Russian Federation. The document recommends that regional authorities check the readiness of hospitals to accept a patient with suspected plague.
According to Russian epidemiologists, today there are 45 plague foci with a total area of about two million square kilometers on the territory of the Russian Federation and the CIS countries. There are 11 outbreaks in Russia with a total area of 220,000 square kilometers. They are located in different landscape and geographical regions (deserts, highlands, steppes). At the same time, some of them do not pose any danger – the plague of the so-called minor subspecies “nests” there, which does not cause disease in humans. Nevertheless, epidemiologists are closely monitoring them.
However, there are also foci of the main subspecies that are located in our country on the most common strains of the main subspecies of the disease in our country – including the so-called medieval biovar. It is he who occupies 93.3% of the territory of the outbreaks, and this is a highly virulent epidemically significant strain. At the beginning of the 20th century, it caused massive outbreaks with a high mortality rate in the Caspian regions. The Gorno-Altai high-mountain plague focus is the most active on the territory of the Russian Federation (its southern part is located on the territory of Mongolia).
The Mongolian part has been examined since 1953, more than a hundred strains of plague have been isolated there (fortunately, almost all of them are weakly virulent and do not pose a particular danger). However, in 2012, the situation aggravated: for the first time, a plague microbe of the main subspecies was isolated, there were three cases of the disease among people, including those with a fatal outcome. As a result, the focus in Altai has become intense: now there are two highly virulent subspecies of the plague in the settlements of predominantly gray marmot. In addition, it became necessary to examine the Mongolian part, which is being carried out by Russian specialists together with the Ministry of Health of Mongolia.
During a press conference, the well-known epidemiologist Gennady Onishchenko said that people have a genetic fear of such formidable names as plague: “However, today it is a bacterial infection that can be cured with antibiotics, but only if diagnosed in a timely manner.” Onishchenko recalls that 26% of the territory of the former USSR was occupied by natural plague foci, but after the detachment of Central Asia, we had 11 foci left: “For example, in the Altai Mountains there is a Koshagar focus with an area of 12.3 square kilometers. A suitable reservoir of plague is about 60 species of small rodents: there are gopher foci, voles.
Our main transmitters of the plague are ground squirrels. In May, they wake up, eat fat before hibernation, which they fall into in August. It is in this month that the foci are active. “Plague regulates the number of rodents. So, in a harvest year, gophers breed well, gorge themselves on grain, and wake up – there is nothing to eat, and the plague takes the weak. For them, this is a biological valve, and for a plague microbe, a person is a by-product. The plague is transmitted to humans either through fleas that have drunk the blood of gophers, or when processing gophers. If an infected person is not treated, he develops plague sepsis – and then he is contagious to others. There were several cases of human infection in the Koshagar outbreak in 2015 (and until 2012, this outbreak was considered dormant). When a outbreak is detected, all locals are vaccinated annually. The gray ground squirrel is considered a delicacy in Altai, but since the outbreak became active, we have banned their capture and are sanitizing the territory. Our anti-plague system knows about all the outbreaks of plague in Mongolia, and our specialists work in this country. And although no one checks the gophers’ passports at the border, we make demarcation lines at our own expense. The Russian anti-plague system is represented by 4 scientific institutes and 15 anti-plague stations; 3 of them are on the border with Mongolia,” says Gennady Onishchenko.
The former chief medical officer of the country cites WHO data for the period 2010-2015: during this time, 3248 cases of plague were registered worldwide, 586 people died. However, the high mortality rate is due to the fact that plague is detected mainly in poor countries. For 20 years, there were 82 cases of plague in Mongolia, 34 deaths.
“There will be no shocks and closure of regions. If you are going to Mongolia, get vaccinated, you will not be vaccinated there,” Onishchenko advises.
Newspaper headline:
And in Mongolia – plague, plague, plague!
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