Federal anti-rabies campaign continues, and other recent rabies reports

SW Virginia & NE Tennessee  09/28/09  tricities.com:  Fish-flavored ketchup packets will start falling from the sky next week as federal wildlife officials continue a seven-year campaign against raccoon strain rabies. From Oct. 5-9, planes flown by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will drop hundreds of thousands of special packets containing an oral rabies vaccine over parts of Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennesse.

“It looks like a white ketchup packet,” APHIS spokeswoman Brie Lang said of the vaccine packets, which are coated in fish meal to make them attractive to their targets. “The raccoons smell the fish meal, bite into the packet and swallow the vaccine.” Prior to the air distribution, APHIS personnel will spread the vaccine packets by hand in the region’s more developed areas, where dropping them from planes might not be the best of ideas. This hand-distribution will occur from Oct. 1-5, Lang said.

Raccoon strain rabies is the most common type found in the Mountain Empire, Lang said. It was present in 78 of the 145 rabid animals found in Northeast Tennessee’s Carter, Greene, Hawkins, Johnson, Sullivan, Unicoi and Washington counties over the past five years, according to records obtained from the Tennessee Department of Health.

A similar pattern exists in Southwest Virginia. Since 2005, the Virginia Department of Health reports, 61 of the 140 rabid animals found in Bristol and Grayson, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, and Wythe counties were raccoons. But that doesn’t mean all 61 raccoons had raccoon strain rabies, because the health department doesn’t record information about the particular strain found in rabid animals. Nor does it mean those 61 animals were the only creatures in Southwest Virginia diagnosed with raccoon strain rabies.

While the raccoon strain is prevalent in the eastern U.S., it is almost non-existent in areas west of the Appalachian Mountains, which serve as a barrier slowing the raccoon population’s migration west. Lang said her agency wants to keep things that way, which is why wildlife officials have drawn a figurative “line in the sand” from Maine to Alabama and made the 12 states it crosses part of the National Rabies Management Program.

Illinois  09/27/09  msn.com:  Will County officials announced yesterday they found a sixth bat with rabies. The south of Chicago county’s Animal Control agency confirmed that the animal found in New Lenox on Wednesday had rabies, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Missouri  09/25/09  news-leader.com:  Missouri is seeing an “unusually high” number of rabies cases, and that has prompted a warning to vaccinate pets and seek treatment for any animal bite, according to the Department of Health and Senior Services. Missouri has had 55 animal rabies cases so far this year, more than the total yearly average, according to state public health veterinarian Dr. Howard Pue. The state also is seeing a higher-than-normal number of rabid skunks, with 35 percent of captured skunks testing positive for rabies.

California  09/25/09  ktla.com:  Health officials in Riverside County are warning residents against handling bats after a 15-year-old Hemet boy was bitten by a creature that tested positive for rabies.  Jose Vazquez says at first, he thought it was a bird that he picked up off the ground last week. It turns out, it was a bat, which bit him on his finger.