The spread of pneumonic plague in a remote part of China has been gathering huge amounts of press coverage since Beijing notified the World Health Organization of the outbreak on Saturday 1 August.

The town of Ziketan and the surrounding part of Qinghai province has been quarantined, with three deaths now confirmed (see AP).

Pneumonic plague is a lung disease caused by the same bacterium, Yersinia pestis as bubonic plague, believed to be the bug behind the Black Death which killed about half of Europe’s population in the 14th century.

“This is not new,” Beijing-based WHO spokeswoman Vivian Tan told Reuters. “There have been sporadic cases reported [in China] over the years. We’re not surprised that it’s come up. We’re in constant contact with the authorities to make sure things are under control.”

One reason for the rash of stories may simply be that the Chinese authorities are being much more open about how they are handling the situation than in the past, suggests the BBC’s correspondent in Beijing, Michael Bristow.

Meanwhile, the Times points out that untreated pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of almost 100%.

And although plague may sound like something from the Dark Ages, 2,118 cases worldwide were reported to WHO in 2003, more than 90 per cent of them in Africa.