JawaPos.com – The Covid-19 pandemic is not over, but China is facing a new outbreak of a type of flu. Known as Brucellosis, a bacterial disease with flu-like symptoms that occurs in northwest China.
These outbreaks are caused by contact with animals. Brucellosis is a zoonotic infectious disease, or disease in animals that can spread to humans. This disease is caused by bacteria that attack sheep, goats, cows, pigs and even dogs. This disease is reported in many countries.
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Humans generally contract this disease through direct contact with infected animals through consumption of contaminated animal products such as milk or cheese. Or through airborne inhalation.
Human-to-human transmission of the disease is extremely rare according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Symptoms in humans include fever and fatigue that last for several weeks. The mortality rate is low, although complications can lead to death. Some symptoms such as joint pain can become chronic and never go away.
The latest outbreak in Lanzhou was first discovered in November 2019 when several students at the Lanzhou Animal Research Institute tested positive for brucellosis. As of the end of December, at least 181 people at the institute had been infected according to provincial health authorities.
The plague has even spread to Heilongjiang Province in the northeast corner of China. It is known that 13 people who worked at the veterinary institute in August 2019 tested positive.
“The government has tested 55,725 people in the city, 6,620 of whom have tested positive for brucellosis to date,” the Lanzhou government said at a news conference according to a Global Times report.
The outbreak originated in a biopharmaceutical factory belonging to the Chinese Animal Husbandry Industry registered in Shanghai. The factory has used a disinfectant that expires in July through August 2019 to make a brucellosis vaccine. Thus, leaving bacteria in the waste gas. The contaminated gas then forms an aerosol that flows downwind to the veterinary institute.
Approximately half a million infected people are reported every year worldwide. China alone typically records tens of thousands of cases.
In 2019, China reported 44,036 cases with one death, up from 37,947 cases and zero deaths a year earlier. The first reported case in China occurred in the city of Chongqing in 1905. China experienced a widespread brucellosis epidemic in the 1950s and 1960s. Last year, China reported more than 10 million cases of infectious diseases including brucellosis, dysentery and dengue fever.
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Editor: Edy Pramana
Reporter: Marieska Harya Virdhani
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