In August 2010, Peru's health minister Oscar Ugarte announced that an outbreak of plague had killed a 14-year-old boy and had infected at least 31 people in a northern coastal province. The boy died of bubonic plague on 26 July 2010. Ugarte stated that authorities were screening sugar and fish meal exports from Ascope Province, located about 325 miles (520 km) northwest of Lima, not far from popular Chicama beach.