Is the medieval disease in YOUR state? Map reveals where ‘Black Death’ still occurs as Colorado confirms shock case

States where people could still catch one of the deadliest bacterial diseases in human history have been revealed in an interactive map.

It comes as a case of the bubonic plague in Colorado gains attention due to the fact many assumed the medieval illness was resigned to history.

But official US data shows that 18 states have suffered outbreaks in the last 50 years, usually linked to contact with rodents or bites from infected fleas.

Overall, nationwide there are about seven cases per year.

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Infections are mostly recorded in the western US, with New Mexico and Colorado detecting the most infections over the past 50 years.

But there are also sporadic cases across the east of the country, although these are normally linked to international travel or lab accidents.

So far this year three cases have been detected, including a person in Oregon who was infected by their cat and a man in New Mexico who died from the disease.

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The plague, which arrived in the US in the 1900s, can be transmitted to people via contact with rodents or the bites of infected fleas or pets.

The most common type in the US is the bubonic plague, which triggers warning signs within one to seven days of infection.

The other form, pneumonic plague — caught by breathing in infected droplets — causes symptoms one to three days later.

Patients normally survive only a few days without treatment, with the fatality rate as high as 60 percent among patients — linked to the disease causes sepsis.

But it can be easily diagnosed using a test on mucus and then treated using antibiotics to eradicate the infection. 

The plague is known as one of the deadliest bacterial infections to humans because it ripped through Europe during the Middle Ages, killing 50million people — or nearly a third of the continent’s population. 

The CDC says 500 cases of the plague have been detected over the last five decades, from 1970 to 2022.

Three-fifths of these were in New Mexico alone, while Arizona and Colorado make up another fifth of infections.

California, Oregon and Utah have recorded more than ten cases each over this time, while Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming and Oklahoma have all recorded more than one.

The CDC says cases have been detected in everyone from infants to adults in their 90s, although they are most common among those aged 12 to 45 years old.

Previous cases include a 10-year-old girl in Colorado who died from the disease in 2021, the first death in the state since 2015.

And a rare infection in a University of Chicago researcher in 2009 who was working with the plague. They are thought to have been infected in a lab accident.

A 59-year-old man who survived the plague in Oregon in 2012 but had to have his fingers and toes amputated said he felt ‘lucky to be alive’.

Paul ‘Steve’ Gaylord was infected after he tried to remove a mouse from the throat of a plague-stricken cat, which bit him.

He was treated with antibiotics, but spent nearly a month on life support and his family braced for his death. He needed physical therapy after the infection and received prosthetics for his hands.

Plague arrived in the United States in the 1900s traveling in rodents on infested steamships.

It was prevalent in western port cities for the next two decades and then spread to rural rats and mice — where it persists today.

The last major outbreak in a city was in Los Angeles in 1925.