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Nearly 200 people were quarantined and monitored in Irkutsk, Siberia, after a researcher at an anti-plague institute died of severe pneumonia suspected to be pneumonic plague.
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What Is Pneumonic Plague?
- The rarest, most severe and most deadly form of plague
- It is an infection of the lungs
- Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis
- It is the only form of plague that spreads directly from person to person
Important Facts for Examsmost asked
- Pneumonic plague — the deadliest form and the only one spreading person to person
- Caused by Yersinia pestis; carried by rodents, spread by the rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis)
- Incubation: 24 hours to 3 days
- Three forms: bubonic (lymph nodes), septicaemic (blood), pneumonic (lungs)
- Treated with gentamicin, doxycycline, ciprofloxacin
- Yersinia pestis is named after Alexandre Yersin, who identified it in Hong Kong, 1894
- Plague caused three historic pandemics — the Plague of Justinian (6th century), the Black Death (14th century) and the Third Pandemic (19th century), which reached Bombay in 1896
- India’s last major outbreak was in Surat, 1994
- The Haffkine Institute, Mumbai was founded after the 1896 plague; Waldemar Haffkine developed the first plague vaccine there
