Island Health and the BC Centre for Disease Control are informing the public that further testing confirmed the free-roaming kitten found in a rural area of Chemainus in July did not have rabies.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s rabies laboratory conducted extensive testing and confirmed the negative rabies test result on August 21. The original test in July was a very rare “false positive” result.
In B.C., the only animals that carry rabies virus are bats. There is very rarely spread of rabies to other animals in B.C. The risk of rabies to humans in B.C. is mainly from bats. Since 1924, there have been two reported human rabies cases in B.C., and both were caused by bat exposures.
Rabies is a serious but preventable disease and early intervention is key to providing people care.
Keeping pets up to date with rabies vaccination is important both to prevent infection with rabies and to improve assessment of pets that demonstrate behaviours that could be compatible with rabies.