A teenager from Mexico became the first person in the US to die after being bitten by a vampire bat and infected with rabies, US health authorities said on Thursday.
The 19-year-old Mexican was a migrant farm worker who had been bitten on the heel by a vampire bat in his native -Michoacan on July 15 last year, 10 days before he left for the US to pick sugar cane at a plantation in Louisiana.
“This case represents the first reported human death from a vampire bat rabies virus variant in the United States,” said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its Morbidity and Mortality weekly report.
The unusually aggressive form of rabies had an incubation period of just 15 days, compared with the median 85 days seen in other cases of human rabies in the US, the CDC said.
Although vampire bat populations are currently confined to Latin America, climate change could be forcing their populations northward, leading to more cases of human infection in the southern US, the CDC warned.
MEDICAL HELP
The victim had never received a rabies vaccine and fell ill about two weeks after he was bitten by the blood-sucking creature.
At the end of July last year, after one day of working in the fields, the man sought medical help for fatigue, shoulder pain, numbness in his left hand and a drooping left eye.
The patient soon developed respiratory distress and a 38.4°C fever.
“During the next several days, the patient became gradually less responsive to external stimuli, developed fixed and dilated pupils, and began having episodes of bradycardia [slow heartbeat] and hypothermia,” the CDC said.
Tests showed he had developed encephalitis, or swelling of the brain.
On Aug. 20, samples of his spinal fluid confirmed a diagnosis of rabies.
A subsequent brain scan revealed severe impairment. His family decided to take him off life support and the man died shortly after.
Postmortem tests on his brain tissue “determined the variant to be a vampire bat rabies virus variant,” the CDC said.
The case “highlights the growing importance of bats in public health,” added the CDC, urging the public to avoid contact with vampire bats and get vaccinated if possible.
INCREASED EXPOSURE
“Research suggests that the range of these bats might be expanding as a result of changes in climate,” the CDC said.
“Expansion of vampire bats into the United States likely would lead to increased bat exposures to both humans and animals — including domestic livestock and wildlife species — and substantially alter rabies virus dynamics and ecology in the southern United States,” it said.
The US has documented a total of 32 cases of human rabies, mostly from a canine rabies variant, since the year 2000, eight of which were acquired abroad.
Two of the cases originated in Mexico.
Vampire bats are bloodsucking nocturnal mammals that are typically found in Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Argentina.
They usually feed on sleeping wildlife and livestock, but sometimes bite people, too.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not