In his contribution, Marek Štefan described the case of a worker from the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute for Siberia and the Far East, who, according to local media, was hospitalized with severe pneumonia after a test tube containing the plague pathogen broke and died on Thursday. The head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, according to Štefan, stated that the woman died of an unspecified form of the plague; nearly 200 people were under medical supervision, according to local media. Štefan explained that the Yersinia pestis bacteria, in his view, is transmitted in nature between rodents and fleas, and it primarily reaches humans through flea bites or contact with an infected animal. According to him, the plague still exists in Africa, especially in Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Asia, and in the western United States, where several hundred cases are reported each year. He distinguished bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic forms; he identified the latter as the most severe and stated that without treatment, it is almost always fatal. According to Štefan, pneumonic plague spreads through droplets during close contact, typically with a patient in the late stage of the disease. He added that the bacteria quickly dies outside the host and that the disease can be treated with common antibiotics, with resistance being extraordinarily rare in his opinion. People after risky contact, according to his contribution, receive a seven-day course of preventive antibiotics. He classified laboratory infections as rare today when the necessary precautions are observed. He also stated that there is no evidence of the possible use of the bacteria for bioterrorism in the current context. He called the risk to the Czech Republic zero and recommended following official sources, not Russian information channels. #mor #zdraví #epidemie (translated)
