BREAKING: Michigan Health Officials Confirm Bubonic Plague

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Updated at 5 p.m.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed the state’s first case of bubonic plague, but there’s no reason for residents of the state to be alarmed.

A resident of Marquette County recently returned from Colorado, an area that has reported plague activity, the health department said.

The individual is recovering, and public health officials say there is no need for immediate concern regarding human-to-human transmission because the individual’s illness never developed into pneumonic plague, according to the Detroit Free Press.

The case is the 14th to be reported nationally this year, and the first in Michigan. Four people have died.

Bubonic plague is a rare, life-threatening disease caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria usually transmitted to humans by rodent fleas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control. In the Middle Ages, millions of Europeans died from the disease, but today antibiotics are effective in treating it if the disease is caught early enough.

This is the first-ever case of bubonic plague in Michigan, public health officials said.

“People who are traveling and recreating outdoors in the western U.S. should be aware of the risk for exposure to plague,” said Dr. Eden Wells, chief medical executive for MDHHS. “Use insect repellent on your clothing and skin and make sure that any pets that may be along are receiving regular flea treatments.”

Symptoms include a sudden onset of fever, headache, chills, and weakness and one or more swollen, tender and painful lymph nodes (called buboes), the CDC said. The bacteria multiply in the lymph node closest to where the bacteria entered the human body. If the patient is not treated with the appropriate antibiotics, the bacteria can spread to other parts of the body.

Nationally, an average of three cases of bubonic plague are reported each year. Health officials are perplexed about the reason for the increase in bubonic plague, which was introduced into the United States in 1900 by rat-infested steamships sailing from affected areas, primarily in Asia, the CDC said.

The plague got its nickname — “Black Death” — because its victims were covered with black boils that oozed blood and pus. In the Middle Ages, the plague wiped out more than 20 million Europeans — about a third of the continent’s population — about a third of the continent’s population, according to History.com.

Though the reason for the uptick in cases is unclear, but nine labs run by the Pentagon are under an emergency ban on research on all bioterror pathogens under what Army Secretary John McHugh called an abundance of caution.

USA Today said the CDC flagged practices at the most secure of labs run by the Pentagon, the Army lab in Maryland, may have mislabeled, improperly stored and shipped samples of potentially infectious plague bacteria.

Most modern-day human cases in the United States occur in two regions: northern New Mexico, northern Arizona and southern Colorado; and California, southern Oregon and far western Nevada.

Four people have died of the plague this year, a man in his 70s from Utah. The others who have died are ages 16, 52 and 79, the Guardian reports. Some of the other cases reported in the U.S. came down with the plague after camping in Yosemite National Park in California, The Guardian reports.

Bubonic plague does not naturally occur in Michigan.

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Photo: Purple-colored Yersinia pestis bacteria, the bacteria that causes the plague, is seen on the spines of a flea. (Photo via National Institute of Allergy And Infectious Diseases)