5 people in U.S. died from rabies in 2021, the most in a decade
COURTESY CDC
This electron micrograph shows multiple rabies viruses, dark and bullet-shaped, within an infected tissue sample. Rabies is a preventable viral disease of mammals most often transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal.
Five people in the United States died from rabies last year, the highest number in a decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
Three of those deaths, including that of a 7-year-old, involved direct contact with bats and occurred over a five-week period starting in late September. The deaths occurred in Idaho, Illinois and Texas, and all three people experienced symptoms three to seven weeks after contact with bats. They died two to three weeks after symptoms began, according to the CDC.
Rabies is caused by a virus that is usually transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal through a bite. It has one of the highest mortality rates of any disease, but death is preventable: Vaccines taken before symptoms appear are nearly 100% effective. Still, rabies causes about 59,000 deaths around the world each year.
Most of the deaths occur in countries where public health resources are inadequate. In the United States, death from rabies is exceedingly rare — in 2019 and 2020, there were no reported cases or deaths. The CDC said the uptick in rabies cases could be because of a lack of awareness about the risks, since the number of rabid bats that have been reported to the National Rabies Surveillance System has been stable since 2007.
Four of the five people who died in late 2021 did not receive the vaccine, according to the CDC. Two of the patients did not take vaccines because they did not know about the risk of rabies from their exposures, either because they did not notice a bite or scratch or because they did not recognize the risks of getting rabies from bats, the CDC said.
“The most important thing that we wanted people to take away from this report is that it is a reminder about how dangerous having direct contact with bats can be,” said Amber Kunkel of the CDC.
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Once the virus reaches the brain, it can cause convulsions, fear of water, excessive salivation and other symptoms. Eventually the infection causes coma and death.
Once symptoms start, rabies is nearly always fatal.
In the early 1900s, more than 100 people in the United States died of rabies every year. That number fell to one or two per year since 1960 as pet vaccination, animal control programs and public health surveillance improved, and the rabies vaccine became more available.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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