The expert said at the time that due to the region's remoteness, the disease killed more than half the infected people. The report also said that since the 1990s, there was a rise in plague cases in humans—from fewer than 10 in the 1980s to nearly 100 cases in 1996 and 254 in 2000.[7] Official statistics posted on the Chinese Health Ministry's Web site showed no cases of plague in 2007 and 2008. In September 2008, two people in east Tibet died of pneumonic plague.[8]