BEHIND THE DATA

A map is only as good
as its sources.

Plague Map is an independent editorial tracker of selected plague-related reports. Each published location has a source, a date, and a status.

What the labels mean

• Confirmed: a cited public health source or credible reporting explicitly establishes a confirmed human plague event.
• Suspected: the source explicitly describes suspected plague, without confirmation.
• Unconfirmed: a plague-related claim is reported but remains unverified or disputed.
• Monitored: surveillance or observation is reported without an established case.
• Resolved: a follow-up source explicitly clears the concern or declares the event over.

Suspected, unconfirmed, and monitored reports share the amber “Developing” filter. A report's age alone never changes it to confirmed or resolved.

Sources and review

We prioritize public health authorities, including WHO, CDC, and relevant national or regional agencies. Credible news coverage can document a developing report, with its uncertainty intact. We link to the source instead of reproducing articles. Official statements are attributed; an official denial is not treated as independent proof.

Only records marked as editorially approved are published. The launch map begins with the Irkutsk region report. Coverage is selective and incomplete. This is not a real-time global surveillance system or an official case registry.

Locations and counts

Pins indicate approximate locations from public reporting. They do not show patient addresses, precise exposure sites, movement, or areas of infection. One event gets one location entry rather than separate pins for each article about it.

The headline strip is a dated editorial snapshot of the Irkutsk event, not a global case total. Its reported death is not a confirmed plague death. N/A means a count is not established, or a case fatality percentage cannot be calculated; it never means zero. A site update date is the editorial review date, not a claim of continuous surveillance. The separate figures below the map count published reports and confirmed locations, not people. Individual case counts are shown only when established in a source. An unknown count stays unknown. Contacts, quarantined people, animal detections, and suspected cases are not added to confirmed human totals.

Dates and freshness

Source dates describe the cited reporting, not necessarily the date symptoms began. Editorial pages show their review date. The map retrieves the published database when opened, with up to two minutes of caching. Data access does not mean fresh reporting. Sources older than seven days trigger a freshness note.

Corrections

We reclassify a report when new source evidence warrants it. We do not silently infer recovery or confirmation. Sources and dates remain visible so readers can inspect the evidence. If the data service is unavailable, the site displays that failure explicitly instead of showing zero cases.

Independence

Plague Map is a sibling project to Live Ebola Map, with shared ownership and a separate database. Neither site is affiliated with WHO, CDC, or any government health authority.