An outbreak of plague killed eight people and infected 11 in China’s impoverished northwest, state media said on Thursday.

Most of the 19 plague cases were farmers or herdsmen who caught the disease by hunting and eating rodents, the Health News said. They fell sick between Oct. 4 and 9 in northwestern Qinghai province.

It did not explain the delay in reporting the outbreak but said it had been brought under control.

The bubonic plague bacterium, carried by rats and fleas, is commonly thought to have been the cause of the Black Death that decimated the population of Europe in the 14th century.

It has been largely eradicated worldwide, but surfaces from time to time. Dozens of cases were reported in China in the 1990s.

The Health Ministry said last month that plague had killed one person and infected another in western Gansu and Qinghai provinces.