YOSEMITE (KMJ) — Animals in Yosemite National Park’s Tuolumne Meadows Campground have tested positive for the plague.
It means the campground will be closed next week between August 17th and August 21st.
Several dead animals have been discovered and tested positive for the plague, prompting the temporary closure while the areas rodents are known to be are sprayed to kill the fleas which could be carrying the plague.
“If a person has been in an area where there’s been animals with plague and within about a period of a week or so when is when, if you’ve been exposed, you’d have symptoms”, says Chief of the Infected Diseases Branch at the California Department of Public Health Duc Vugia.
“If someone has fever within a week of being exposed to an area where there were animals with plague then they should talk to their doctor, they should see their physician”.
Fears of plague spreading around the national park were sparked off at the start of this month, after a child from Los Angeles who had been staying at the national park contracted the disease.
A link to advice from the National Park themselves can be found clicking here.
Listen to KMJ’s Dominic McAndrew’s extended August 6th interview with Duc Vugia and Chief of the Vector-Borne Diseases Section Vicki Kramer about that diagnosis of plague, and how visitors can protect themselves from it:
