Abstract
On 3 August 1900, bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis) broke out in Glasgow for the first time during the Third Pandemic. The local sanitary authorities rigorously tracked the spread of the disease and they found that nearly all of the 35 cases could be linked by contact with a previous case. Despite trapping hundreds of rats in the area, there was no evidence of a rat epizootic and the investigators speculated that the outbreak could be due to human-to-human transmission of bubonic plague. Here we use a likelihood-based method to reconstruct transmission trees for the outbreak. From the description of the outbreak and the reconstructed trees, we infer several epidemiological parameters. We found that the estimated mean serial interval was 7.4–9.2 days and the mean effective reproduction number dropped below 1 after implementation of control measures. We also found a high rate of secondary transmissions within households and observations of transmissions from individuals who were not terminally septicaemic. Our results provide important insights into the epidemiology of a bubonic plague outbreak during the Third Pandemic in Europe.
Highlights
IntroductionPlague is a zoonotic disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is well known as the cause of at least three pandemics in human history: the First Pandemic (sixth to eighth centuries), the Second Pandemic (fourteenth to nineteenth centuries) and the Third Pandemic (beginning in the nineteenth century)
Plague is a zoonotic disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is well known as the cause of at least three pandemics in human history: the First Pandemic, the Second Pandemic and the Third Pandemic
Thirty-one (88%) suspected cases of plague in Glasgow were diagnosed by the presence of external buboes; and 17 (48.5%) of these cases were confirmed by bacteriological examination [11]
Summary
Plague is a zoonotic disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is well known as the cause of at least three pandemics in human history: the First Pandemic (sixth to eighth centuries), the Second Pandemic (fourteenth to nineteenth centuries) and the Third Pandemic (beginning in the nineteenth century). At the beginning of the Third Pandemic, Y. pestis spread from Asia to Europe, Africa, Australia and the Americas along maritime transport networks [1]. These introductions led to the establishment of plague reservoirs in rodent populations around the world, which today pose a recurrent threat to nearby human populations [2]. Cases of bubonic plague typically arise through contact with sylvatic or commensal animals and their fleas [3,4].
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