Plague persisted 400 years beyond the Black Death, DNA reveals

Scientists at the University of Tartu sequenced 26 Yersinia pestis genomes from 11 sites across Estonia, Russia, England, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, spanning the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries. The plague recurred repeatedly over 400 years through trade routes and wars, creating new genetic variants and rodent reservoirs across Europe.

We found evidence for repeated introductions of plague into Estonia starting already in the late 14th century and identified several previously unknown genetic lineages, both in urban and rural settings.