A Bayfield-area woman is home after a week at Mercy Regional Medical Center with septicemic plague.
A family member said the woman didn’t want to be identified and that a prairie dog colony recently died on her property.
Bubonic plague is the most common form of plague. Symptoms typically include fever, chills, extreme weakness, abdominal pain, shock and bleeding into the skin and other organs.
Septicemic plague can be contracted by handling an infected animal or from bites of infected fleas. This is the second case of plague in La Plata County this year.
Since 1957, Colorado has identified 65 cases of human plague, nine (14 percent) of which were fatal.
For more information, visit www.cdc.gov/plague.
