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M0nKeY · - Remember -

NEW YORK (AP) - A New Mexico man in isolation at a New York City hospital tested positive for bubonic plague, the dangerous bacterial disease that has not been seen in the city in at least a century, health officials said today.
City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said the 53-year-old-man's wife is also likely to have contracted the disease. The man was in hospital in critical condition Wednesday, while his 47-year-old wife was in stable condition. The couple were visiting New York.

Frieden said the disease is not contagious and New Yorkers are not at risk. Bubonic plague is normally transmitted from fleas that feed on infected rodents and cannot be spread person-to-person.

New Mexico health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were investigating at the couple's home in Santa Fe, where rodents and fleas on the property tested positive for plague, Frieden said. He said one-half of all cases of plague in the United States come from New Mexico.

The man, whose name wasn't released, tested positive in a preliminary test for plague, Frieden said. Preliminary test results for the woman have not come back, he said. Final test results won't be available for two days.

Health officials were combing their pre-1900 records to find the last case of bubonic plague in the city.

The couple, who came to New York City on Nov. 1, showed up at Beth Israel Hospital's emergency room Tuesday night, experiencing fever and swollen lymph nodes, hospital spokesman Mike Quane said. They said they had been sick for two days, Frieden said.

The patients were placed in isolation. Health officials also were testing for more common respiratory illnesses.

The couple began a 10-day course of antibiotic treatment Tuesday.

Plague is one of a handful of agents U.S. health officials fear could be used in a bioterrorist attack. It occurs in 10 to 20 people in the United States and 1,000 to 3,000 people worldwide each year, said the CDC. About one in seven U.S. cases is fatal.

In extremely rare cases, bubonic plague can transform into pneumonic plague, a more serious form that is contagious. But even then, the patients' isolation in the hospital would keep the public away from any danger, Frieden said.

Plague outbreaks have killed about 200 million people in the last 1,500 years. The most infamous, Europe's Black Death, started in 1347, killing 25 million people in Europe and 13 million in the Middle East and China within five years.

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