RABIES ALERT: New York, United States
A Rabies-infected Stray Cat Attacked at Least One Person on Staten Island; NYC Officials Issue Warning
Shared from SILive | May 20th 2024
A rabies-infected stray cat recently attacked at least one person in Travis, and city officials now want residents to be on the lookout for other possibly-infected animals, a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) spokesman said Friday.
A flyer being circulated by the Health Department shows a picture of the male brown tabby domestic shorthair cat that officials believe was living near Travis Avenue and Victory Boulevard for over a year.
The flyer recommends that anyone who may have come in contact with the cat before May 2 seek medical attention. Additionally, there may be other infected cats or wildlife in the area, so anyone scratched or bitten by a wild animal should also seek medical attention. People with pets who were bitten should also contact their veterinarian.
After authorities located the cat with the confirmed rabies infection, they caught it before later euthanizing the animal, according to the Health Department. Animals cannot be tested for rabies while alive, so the cat’s euthanasia was a necessary step.
The attacked individual received treatment after the exposure, and a human case of rabies hasn’t been reported in the five boroughs since 1947, according to the Health Department.
According to DOHMH, rabies is a fatal virus transmitted to people and other mammals through the bite of an infected animal. The virus can also be transmitted if a rabid animal’s saliva or nerve tissue gets directly into another animal’s eyes, nose, mouth or an open wound.
Most commonly found in raccoons in the five boroughs, only 600 animals have tested positive for the virus since the city began conducting surveillance in 1992, according the Health Department. Last year, only four raccoons and a cat tested positive for the virus, the Advance/SILive.com reported.
The city set up bait stations with rabies vaccines multiple times last year in the Island’s wooded and marshy areas.
Symptoms of rabies usually start to appear one to three months after exposure, but in rare cases, symptoms have not shown up for several years, according to the Health Department.
Modern post-exposure treatments for rabies using vaccines and antibodies have been almost universally effective in preventing death among humans in the Western Hemisphere.
According to a March 2023 report from the Infectious Disease Society of America, an 84-year-old Minnesota man became the first person to die in the U.S. from rabies in 2021 despite receiving those treatments. Scientists concluded that the failure of those treatments was most likely due to an unknown impaired immunity in the man.
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