A second, less deadly outbreak occurred in 1920–21, killing approximately 9,300 people.The Peoples Republic of China has eradicated pneumonic plague from most parts of the country, but still reports occasional cases in remote western areas, where the disease is carried by rats and the marmots that live across the Himalayan plateau. Outbreaks can be caused when a person eats an infected marmot or comes into contact with fleas carried by rats. A 2006 WHO report from an international meeting on plague cited a Chinese government disease expert as saying that most cases of the plague in Chinas northwest occur when hunters are contaminated while skinning infected animals.The expert said at the time that, due to the regions 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. In September 2008, two people in East Tibet died of pneumonic plague.An outbreak of the disease in China began in August 2009 in Ziketan Town located in Qinghai Province. The town was sealed off and several people died as a result of the disease. According to spokesperson Vivian Tan of the WHO office in Beijing, "In cases like this [in August 2009], we encourage the authorities to identify cases, to investigate any suspicious symptoms among close contacts, and to treat confirmed cases as soon as possible. So far, they have done exactly that.
York was exposed to the bacteria while conducting a necropsy on a cougar carcass.In 2014, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment confirmed that a Colorado man had been diagnosed with pneumonic plague, the first confirmed human case in Colorado in more than 10 years, and one of only 60 cases since 1957. The man was found to have the disease after the family dog died unexpectedly and a necropsy revealed that the disease was the cause. Three additional pneumonic plague cases were confirmed in Colorado before the outbreak ended. References
External links

 Media related to Pneumonic plague at Wikimedia Commons
Frequently Asked Questions | Plague | CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.