The death of a star high-school pitcher and quarterback in Northern Colorado has been attributed to a rare form of the plague, county officials say.
Taylor Gaes died June 8, a day after his 16th birthday, as he was being driven to a hospital. The cause of death, officials at the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment confirmed, was septicemic plague, a form in which the disease enters the bloodsteam directly.
Gaes is the first resident of the county to have died of the disease, which is extremely rare and lethal in humans, since 1999. “While the investigation is still ongoing, the individual may have contracted the disease from fleas on a dead rodent or other animal on the family acreage,” the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment said in a statement. It is coordinating the investigation, which it says includes experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the State Health Department, and the Larimer County coroner’s office.
Health officials asked that anyone who visited the family’s home or attended the scattering of his ashes on the family’s property before the cause of Gaes’ death was determined seek medical attention if they developed a fever. Plague “can spread through rodent populations in a localized area – often resulting in mass animal ‘die-offs,'” the health and environment department statement said. It cannot be passed from human to human. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that an average of seven human plague cases are reported each year nationwide, with most in Northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, southern Colorado, California, southern Oregon and far western Nevada.
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