Rabies incidents high in Allegheny County
-
Throughout Allegheny County, 26 animals tested positive for rabies. The cases involved 16 raccoons, five bats, four cats and one groundhog.
Share with others:
Allegheny County tied with Lancaster County for the second-highest number of confirmed animal rabies cases in the state last year -- narrowly avoiding the No. 1 spot that no county wants.
Throughout Allegheny County, 26 animals tested positive for rabies. Those locales include the City of Pittsburgh, Mt. Lebanon, Sewickley, Bradford Woods, Marshall, Monroeville, Bethel Park, Valencia and Sharpsburg. The cases involved 16 raccoons, five bats, four cats and one groundhog.
What to doWho should you call if you see an animal that you suspect has rabies, or if your pet has been bitten or scratched in a confrontation with another animal?
• Start with your municipality. Towns that have animal control services may send one of those officers out to investigate. Some municipalities will tell people to call the Pennsylvania Game Commission if a wild animal is involved.
• Note that medical doctors are required to report attacks on people to the Pennsylvania Department of Health and veterinarians are required to report animal attacks to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
• Members of the public can also contact local offices of the state Agriculture Department. See the "blue pages" in telephone books.
• State agriculture officials investigate reports and send dead animals to Harrisburg for rabies tests. In Allegheny County, the Health Department has a rabies testing lab, but most counties do not.
If a pet is up to date on rabies inoculations, the pet is quarantined at its home for 90 days. If shots have expired, the pet is quarantined for 180 days.
-- Compiled by Linda Wilson Fuoco
Health and agriculture officials, of course, advise people to avoid wildlife, but sometimes the wild things seek out people and pets.
For example: In August, a woman on Osborne Lane in Sewickley let her dogs outside into the family's fenced yard. A short time later she saw the dogs sniffing something in the yard. It turned out to be a dead raccoon, and the woman did not know whether her dogs had killed it.
The raccoon tested positive for rabies [the woman had no direct contact with the raccoon and was in no danger], according to a report filed by Erin Moore, a veterinarian field officer with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
Both dogs were current on rabies vaccines, but as a precaution they were quarantined for 90 days at their home.
Chester County, near Philadelphia, finished in first place last year with 29 confirmed animal rabies cases, including 16 raccoons and five skunks.
Westmoreland County finished a close third with 25 cases -- 21 raccoons, two bats, one cat and one skunk.
Other counties and their rabies totals include:
• Washington County had eight, including one cat and one dog
• Beaver County, six, including one dog
• Butler County, four
• Fayette County, three
• Greene County, two
The figures were released this month by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. That state agency employs veterinarians, including Ms. Moore, to investigate reports of rabid animals and send the carcasses of suspected rabid animals to state labs for testing.
Throughout Pennsylvania last year, 450 animals tested positive for rabies: 245 raccoons, 54 skunks, 50 cats, 44 foxes, 34 bats, six cattle, six groundhogs, three dogs, two deer, two beavers, two goats and, in Lycoming County, one bobcat.
The state veterinarians, or veterinary medical field officers, investigate to determine whether people and pets have come in direct contact with rabid animals. Contact includes bites from an animal, scratches that break the skin or animal saliva that contacts a break in the skin or mucus membranes such as the eyes, nose or mouth of a person or pet.
If the animal cannot be caught and tested for rabies, authorities have to proceed as if rabies had been confirmed.
Rabies is a deadly virus of the central nervous system, attacking the spinal cord and brain. There is no cure, and the disease is generally fatal once symptoms appear.
Domestic animals can be vaccinated so they won't get the disease. Pennsylvania law requires all dogs to be vaccinated against rabies. Cats must be vaccinated if they spend any time in a house, which means outdoor cats and barn cats are exempt.
People bitten by a rabid animal will not get rabies if they get, as quickly as possible, what the medical profession calls call "post exposure rabies vaccination."
The rabies-prevention treatment used to entail many painful injections in the stomach. The treatment now "consists of relatively painless injections in the arm," according to the Allegheny County Health Department, which tracks cases where humans come in contact with rabies.
All mammals can get rabies, but the mammals that most often get and spread the disease are carnivores that attack and bite other mammals.
While some rabid animals exhibit no symptoms at all, aggression is one of the best-known symptoms. Wild animals that normally shy away from people boldly seek and confront them.
A homeowner on Government Lane in Penn Township, Westmoreland County, was walking on her driveway when a skunk came from behind a bag of garbage and bit her on the ankle.
The woman "tried to shoo the skunk away," Ms. Moore wrote in her report, "but it followed her into the house. She picked it up by the tail and flung it out the door. It continued to wander around the porch and act abnormal."
The skunk tested positive for rabies. Ms. Moore's report says that "one person," presumably the woman, received "post exposure rabies prophylaxis."
The skunk attacked on a hot day in August, but the rabies virus survives year-round. Some of the mammals that get and spread rabies -- including bats and groundhogs -- hibernate in the winter. But others, including raccoons and cats, are out and about year-round.
Rats are one of the mammals that blessedly never show up on state rabies reports.
To get rabies, a rat would have to be bitten by a rabid carnivore, Ms. Moore said. Since rats are basically herbivores, they usually don't attack or bite other mammals. Rats die from the disease without passing the rabies on to other animals.
First Published January 26, 2012 12:00 am
