Rospotrebnadzor once again plunged the tourist industry, exhausted by the troubles of recent years, into a panic: the department recommended that the regions introduce additional measures against the importation of the plague. Regional authorities were advised “to be prepared for measures to prevent the importation of plague.” And, although the “Black Death”, as this disease was called during the great epidemics that “decimated” a significant part of the population of Europe, is not so terrible in modern realities, and the countries of the “risk group” for plague are not included in the main tourist list, pessimists from tourist experts are reminded that when covid first appeared, no one thought that the disease would paralyze the life of the whole world for two whole years.
The reason for the “plague” panic was the decision of the chief state sanitary doctor of the Russian Federation Anna Popova, published on the official Internet portal of legal information. “I decide: 1. To recommend to the highest officials of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation (heads of the highest executive body of state power of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation): risks of activity of natural foci located on the territory of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation, ”it says.
In addition, the regional authorities were instructed to inform the public about plague prevention measures, including the need for immunization, and the medical authorities and officials of the regional Rospotrebnadzor to assess the readiness of the hospital base to carry out primary anti-epidemic measures in case a patient with suspected plague is identified. All this must be done before the end of June.
Our reference: plague is an acute natural focal infectious disease of the group of quarantine infections, occurring with an exceptionally severe general condition, fever, damage to the lymph nodes, lungs and other internal organs, often with the development of sepsis. Its main danger is high lethality and high contagiousness. The disease is divided into several types, of which the most famous and dangerous are pulmonary and bubonic. During the plague pandemic in the 14th century in Europe – the very one that gave rise to the name Black Death – the lethality of the disease reached 95%, now with timely competent treatment, the lethality has been reduced to 5-10%, but the risk is still high.
In nature, the source of the disease – the plague bacillus (lat. Yersinia pestis) is carried by rodents, more precisely, the carriers of the disease are fleas that live on rodents. Among other things, the plague is spread by marmots, ground squirrels and gerbils, so one of the unsafe regions for plague is Mongolia, where these rodents are traditionally eaten. There are also known cases of plague being imported already in the 20th century from India and other Asian countries.
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