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All residents evacuated from areas close to anthrax locus in Siberia

A total of 23 residents of the tundra have been diagnosed with anthrax

MOSCOW, August 3. /TASS/. All the residents of areas adjoining the locus of anthrax in the Yamal district in northwestern Siberia have been evacuated to provisional accommodation facilities, Healthcare Minister Veronika Skvortsova.

"There are no people or livestock on the affected territory now," she said. "As for more distant areas, only reindeer herders remain there and their number there is the minimum possible, while all the women, children, adolescents, most grownup men have been evacuated from there.

The evacuated people have been accommodated, among other places, in the dormitory of a boarding school in the township of Yar-Sale.

"Also, new nomad tents are put up in the unaffected areas now," Skvortsova added.

Authorities imposed quarantine on the Yamal district in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area in northwestern Siberia on July 25 because of the reemergence of anthrax there after an absence of 75 years.

Its surfacing was caused by the impact of an abnormal heatwave on permafrost, as the Yamal Peninsula has been in the grips of temperatures of up to 35C for a whole months. This led to the thawing of anthrax bacteria there.

According to Skvortsova, as many as 23 residents of the tundra have been diagnosed with anthrax. Ninety people evacuated from the locus area were taken to a hospital in the regional capital Salekhard.

A twelve-year-old boy died of the disease on August 1.

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