CDC launches multistate investigation after imported rescue dog tests positive for rabies variant twice eradicated in U.S. - The Washington Post

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a multistate public health investigation after at least 12 people were exposed to a dog, imported from Azerbaijan by a rescue group, that tested positive for a rabies variant.

According to testing by the CDC, the dog was infected with rabies before it arrived in the United States.

The rabies test, which can only be conducted by examining the brain after an animal is euthanized, showed the animal was positive with a canine rabies variant that is highly transmissible from dog to dog.

The detected variant was eradicated in the United States in the 1970s, but reemerged in the 1990s as dogs and coyotes near the U.S.-Mexico border mixed, Wallace said.

The canine variant that rapidly transmits from dog to dog is responsible for 59,000 human deaths a year — mostly in African and Asia — and is usually acquired from a dog bite, Wallace said.

Wallace said the canine variant is detected in the United States “every few years,” typically when a patient is bitten by a rabid dog while overseas and doesn’t get treatment.

The other exposed animals from Azerbaijan will be put in quarantine to make sure the variant doesn’t spread further, Wallace said.

About 40 to 60 dogs in the United States are infected with rabies each year from a wildlife variant, meaning a dog contracted the virus from a wild animal like a raccoon or a bat, he said.

Regardless of which variant an animal contracts, “a dog or a cat with rabies that is shedding the virus in its saliva will look sick very soon,” Wallace said.