NBC News
In the last 12 months six deaths have been reported in rage in the United States, the highest figure in several years in the country, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Several wild animals, from Zorrillos in Kentucky to foxes in Arizona and Mapaches in Long Island, have presented a rise in positive cases of the deadly disease. Experts attribute this increase to the natural habitats of animals have been decimated, but also that there is better surveillance to detect infections.
“We are tracking 15 different possible active spotlights,” said Ryan Wallace, the team in charge of the CDC rabies. Those foci are in areas such as Nassau County in New York (which in July issued a public health alert for rabid animals) or as Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. There are also reports in parts of Alaska, Arizona, California, North Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Oregon and Vermont.
“There are parts of the United States where we are receiving more calls and more reports,” Wallace said, especially for issues such as foxes and rabid bats. “It will be until the end of the year that we will be certain that these numbers represent an annual increase, but now in the middle of the season of rage it seems that the activity has increased.”
(A Californian sick of bubonic plague, probably due to a flea from Lake Tahoe)
In all US states, except Hawaii, there are cases detected of rage. The most common cause of humans are bats are bats, which are also the most prone animal species to be infected, according to CDC.
The health agency says that 1.4 million people in the United States are reviewed every year for possible exposure to the virus, and that, on average, the vaccine is applied to 100,000 to prevent them from getting sick.
That the figure of confirmed cases increased by 100%, without the annual season of rage still ends, it is something huge “
SCOTT Lavigne Franklin County officer, North Carolina
Among those 100,000 cases is Samantha Lang, 22, who in July says that a bat who got into his department in Greenwood, Indiana, during the night seems to have bitten her. The next day he noticed something on his arm he found the bat in the air conditioning duct of his home.
He contacted the Local Health Department and urged her to receive vaccines that are given after a possible exposure, or anti -rabic prophylaxis.
“I would never have thought it was something I had to worry about,” Lang said.
Alert symptoms
The rabies virus gets to the central nervous system and is practically 100% fatal as soon as there are symptoms, which can occur between a week or up to a year after being exposed to the disease.
Symptoms initially include discomforts similar to those of a flu, but quickly scale to things such as paralysis, extreme salivation, hallucinations and difficulty to pass saliva, after which death usually follows within a few weeks.
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Experts say that the amount of deaths in humans in the US throughout the last year is very worrying because compared to 2015 and 2024 there were 17 cases of infection of rage, two of which were due to infections being outside the United States, according to the CDC.
The most common mechanism for a person to be exposed to rage is by saliva of an infected animal, so bites are especially dangerous.
Most cases before the 1960s in the United States were for infected pets, but the most common strain at that time, present in dogs, has been practically eradicated thanks to animal vaccination patterns at home.
On the most recent dates, the increase has been seen mainly in wild animals, notoriously in places such as Franklin County in North Carolina, where confirmed cases of rage were doubled in unbeatized animals during the last year.
“So that the confirmed case number increased by 100%, without the end of the annual season of rage, it is something huge,” said Scott Lavigne, the county director.
Less fauna space
Lavigne believes that urban recreation, which has blurred borders between human settlements and wild areas, has contributed a lot to this situation. Because animals that previously occupied natural areas that were wider now end up in less space, such that if one is infected with rage it is more likely to be infected with more fauna.
“The (human) population of Franklin’s county has increased by 35% since 2020, and those people need where to live, then we see more homes” in parts that were nature before, Lavigne said.
People do not always realize that they were exposed to a rabid animal: deaths of people have been reported, such as one in December, who did not notice that they had been bitten or scratched by a bat. There are also cases of people who refused to apply prophylaxis vaccines.
The virus sometimes occurs differently depending on which animal was the infection or what strain it is; Not always the infected animal behaves aggressively, as many people believe it happens when it is rabid.
“There is a strain in which animals become super friendly,” said Lavigne. “There was a case of a family that saw a Mapache near his home that seemed to have an injury and wanted to receive affection and caresses, and was not growling or anything.”
The family was with the animal for several hours, until it died. They talked to the animal control service to collect the body “and how good because that is when tests of detection to the brain of the Mapache were done, positively and the entire family vaccinated,” said Lavigne. “What terror they would not have called for animals control.”
Lower dog vaccination worries
As there are more wild animals that are infected, many veterinarians are concerned that there is misinformation or doubts do not support science in terms of vaccinating, not only among humans but to our pets.
An analysis published in the medical magazine Vaccine in 2023 discovered that Americans believe that up to 40% of vaccines for dogs were not safely, and that 37% believe that vaccinating their dogs could result in development problems as an alleged dog autism (there is no evidence that this happens).
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The veterinarian Gabriella Motta, who works in Glenolden, Pennsylvania, and was co -author of the analysis, says that more and more frequently he sees customers who believe that vaccinating their dogs can harm them.
“It’s something that worries us, especially if you start increasing in the coming years,” said Motta. “If vaccination rates continue to fall, or doubts about whether vaccinating pets increase, are we going to end up seeing more anger in pets and not only in wild fauna? You have to start lighting alarms,” he added.
The applied antiRrabic vaccine after a possible exposure has improved a lot since the first time it was applied in humans, in the abdomen area. The current version is based on a dose of immunoglobulin, which contains antibodies against rage, just after the exposure, and four vaccination doses now applied in the arm.
The rule to take into account, according to experts, is that you must suspect the possibility of rage every time an animal behaves differently: either too aggressive, too fearful or too friendly.
