Plague Tracker
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Method
How we track cases
A circle is a country’s confirmed-case total from WHO. The Russia pin is the exception: it shows people under observation, not confirmed cases.
The baseline is a WHO report
The six countries on the map come from the Weekly Epidemiological Record of September 25, 2026, the review of human plague reported from 2019 through 2025. That is seven years added together, not the tally for September 2026.
The WHO news release that accompanies that issue reports 2,646 confirmed cases, 3,847 suspected cases, and 423 deaths. The 11% fatality is 423 divided by 3,847, so it is among suspected cases, not among confirmed cases alone.
Source: WHO, September 29, 2026. Six countries reported confirmed cases: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Kenya, Uganda, China, and Mongolia. The Congo and Madagascar are 97.7% of confirmed cases.
What each pin shows
| Country | Confirmed | Suspected | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic Republic of the Congo | 1,893 | 1,893 | 101 |
| Madagascar | 693 | 1,482 | 307 |
| Kenya | 22 | 375 | 0 |
| China | 19 | — | — |
| Mongolia | 17 | — | — |
| Uganda | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Russia — Irkutsk | — | — | — |
China: mainly Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Gansu. Uganda: 2019 only. Madagascar: endemic, season September–April. Where the report’s table leaves a dash, the pin does not invent a number.
The Russia pin is 200 people under observation
It follows a Visegrád 24 post from October 4, 2026. The post says 200 people are under observation after contact with a person reported to have been infected in Irkutsk, Siberia. That is a contact count, not 200 confirmed cases.
The post describes a possible plague outbreak and a lab worker who died at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute. WHO has not published this as a case total. The 200 are not part of the 2,646 confirmed cases, the 423 deaths, or the 11%. The header stays on the WHO figures.
What does not become a case
A social post does not become a confirmed case. The Irkutsk pin is the one post on this board, and it stays a count of people under observation. WHO’s public Disease Outbreak News API exists, and the latest plague bulletin is from October 1, 2021, on Madagascar. Until a new one is published with a count, the confirmed circles stay on this report.
- The Suspected button highlights countries that have a suspected count in the table: the Congo, Madagascar, Kenya, and Uganda.
- Deaths in the header stay at 423, the WHO total. The country rows assign 409. The other 14 are not attributed to a country, and we do not assign them.
- Suspected counts listed by country do not add up to 3,847. The report also includes notifications without a confirmed count for each country. The header keeps the WHO total.