An Arizona resident died of pneumonic plague in Coconino County, health officials confirmed last week, while denying the death was connected to a recent number of prairie dog deaths in the area.
The death is the first casualty of the pneumonic plague in the county since 2007.
The disease is rarely found in humans, so much so that only seven people are diagnosed with the severe lung infection annually in the United States. Arizona alone had only recorded seven cases since 2006, according to The Guardian.
Pneumonic plague, not to be confused with the bubonic plague, which decimated medieval Europe, though still caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, can be spread through airborne droplets.
Hospital operator Northern Arizona Healthcare shared that “despite appropriate initial management and attempts to provide life-saving resuscitation, the patient did not recover.”
The anonymous patient entered the hospital for treatment the same day they passed from the disease.
Signs and symptoms of plague
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shared that those suffering from pneumonic plague may develop fever, experience headache, weakness, and a rapidly developing pneumonia with shortness of breath, chest pain, cough, and sometimes bloody or watery mucus.
The CDC also warned that pneumonic plague is the most serious form of the disease and the only one that can be transmitted between people.