On Jul. 11, 2025, Coconino County Health and Human Services (CCHHS) officials received confirmatory test results, and have confirmed that a Coconino County, Arizona resident has died from pneumonic plague, a severe lung infection caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium.

The death is not related to a recent report of a prairie dog die-off in the Townsend Winona area, northeast of Flagstaff. This is the first recorded death from Pneumonic plague in Coconino County since 2007 when an individual had an interaction with a dead animal infected with the disease.

Plague is rare in humans. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention there are an average of seven human plague cases reported each year in the United States. The risk to the public of exposure to plague remains low.

The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, can be transmitted to animals through bites from infected fleas. The disease can be transmitted to humans from the bite of an infected flea or through contact with an infected animal. According to health officials, the risk of human-to-human transmission is very low. The last reported occurrence of human-to-human transmission was reported in 1924, according to the National Institutes of Health, and is typically spread through respiratory droplets.

Due to the endemic nature of plague in the southwest United States, CCHHS maintains a surveillance system for the disease. CCHHS also conducts surveillance for other endemic diseases, including West Nile virus, hantavirus, and rabies, to rapidly detect disease, understand its spread, and implement control measures to protect the public.