Residents trying to flee Chinese city hit by plague

BEIJING -- Residents of a farming town in western China said Tuesday people were seeking to flee in defiance of a lockdown by authorities to prevent the spread of highly infectious pneumonic plague which has claimed three lives in the area.

Police have set up checkpoints around Ziketan in Qinghai province, a town of 10,000 people, which has been put under quarantine after at least a dozen people caught the lung infection which can kill within 24 hours if untreated.

Some people tried to leave the quarantined area Monday evening, mostly by foot, after the third death was reported, two residents said. Most of the town's residents are Tibetan herders of yaks, sheep and pigs.

"A lot of people ran off last night when they heard that another person died of this plague. They are mostly from other provinces," said a food seller surnamed Han who runs a stall at the Crystal Alley Market. "They headed back home with food, water and their donkeys."

Fighting the plague

Medical workers in Ziketan were disinfecting and killing rodents and insects that can be carriers for the bacteria that causes the plague, according to a notice on the provincial health department website.

A Tibetan woman named Xiumaocuo, a migrant construction worker from another village in Qinghai, said few people were on the streets Tuesday.

"I've heard the migrant workers who build projects went home last night," she said. "My boss told me that more than 50 of the 100 construction workers on our project left homes already."

It was unclear if the people who headed out of the town made it past the police checkpoints, which residents say have been set up in 17-mile radius around Ziketan, which lies more than 300 miles west of Beijing.

Officials at the local and provincial level were unavailable to comment.

Chinese authorities have been in contact with the World Health Organization about their steps to contain the outbreak of plague, a disease that circulates mainly among small animals like rats and mice but can also infect humans.

The Black Death

Pneumonic plague is caused by the same bacteria that causes bubonic plague -- the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe in the Middle Ages. Pneumonic plague is a less common and more deadly form of the disease. It can be directly spread between humans since the bacteria is airborne and can easily be inhaled by those in close contact with infected patients. But if treated early with antibiotics, it is curable.

The outbreak in Ziketan was first detected Thursday, although it isn't clear when the first victim died.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the latest victim was a 64-year-old man named Danzhi -- a neighbor of the first two fatalities, described in reports as a 32-year-old herdsman and a 37-year-old man.

The herdsman fell sick after burying his dog, which had died suddenly, according to a report by the official China National Radio, citing a hospital official. He died four days after the dog's burial and the relatives who handled his funeral were showing symptoms within days, the report said.

Those relatives were among a further nine people who are infected and in a hospital, according to the local health bureau. One is in extremely serious condition and one other has developed symptoms of coughing and chest pain, but the rest are in stable condition, Xinhua and the health department said.

China has had cases of plague before. WHO said in a 2006 report that most cases in China's northwest occur when hunters are contaminated while skinning infected animals.

In 2004, eight villagers in Qinghai province died of plague, most infected after killing or eating wild marmots, creatures related to gophers and prairie dogs.

Worldwide, thousands of plague cases are reported each year, mostly in Africa. Between 1998 and 2008, nearly 24,000 cases were reported, including about 2,000 deaths, in Africa, Asia, the Americas and eastern Europe.