Fleas in Arizona Test Positive for the Plague–Here’s What You Need to Know About it
Scary headlines proclaim the return of the killer bacterial infection. We asked an infectious disease expert to separate the hype from the facts.
Anthea Levi
August 14, 2017
Turns out the plague—or Black Death, as it was called by the Europeans who survived this fearsome killer in the Middle Ages—isn’t a disease of the past. In the last two weeks, public health officials have confirmed that fleas in two Arizona counties have tested positive for the infectious disease. The affected counties are Navajo County and Coconino County, where plague-infested fleas were found on prairie dogs near the town of Taylor, the Associated Press reported.
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