Kumari Lokugamage*, Hiroaki Kariwa* , Daisuke Hayasaka*, Bai Zhong Cui*, Takuya Iwasaki†, Nandadeva Lokugamage*, Leonid I. Ivanov‡, Vladimir I. Volkov‡, Vladimir A. Demenev§, Raisa Slonova¶, Galina Kompanets¶, Tatyana Kushnaryova¶, Takeshi Kurata†, Kenji Maeda*, Koichi Araki*, Tetsuya Mizutani*, Kumiko Yoshimatsu#, Jiro Arikawa#, and Ikuo Takashima*

Author affiliations: *Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan; †National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan; ‡Plague Control Station, Khabarovsk, Russia; §Far Eastern Medical Association, Khabarovsk, Russia; ¶Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia; #Hokkaido University School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan;