A middle-aged married couple in China was diagnosed with pneumonic plague, a highly infectious disease similar to bubonic plague, which ravaged Europe in the middle ages, as CNN reported.

This is the second time the disease has been confirmed in the region this year. The first time was in May when a Mongolian couple died from bubonic plague after eating a raw kidney from a marmot. That triggered a six-day quarantine in the area, according to The Guardian.

The two newest cases came from Inner Mongolia, a sparsely populated province in northern China, and were diagnosed in Beijing where the patients are receiving treatment, according to CNN. The Chinese government has warned citizens to take precautions to protect themselves from a potential outbreak, though it did say that there was no reason to panic and the risk of transmission was extremely low, as the New York Times reported. The New York Times also reported that the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention responded quickly to the cases, quarantined the patients, did an investigation into people who could have been exposed to the bacteria and disinfected all relevant sites. They also ramped up their monitoring of all patients with fevers. However, South Korea press affiliates have followed rumors on Chinese social media that the Chinese government is downplaying the scope of the disease and many more people are actually exposed and infected, as the UPI reports.