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A gray fox sparks an outbreak of rabies in a Mexican-American family in Sonora, Mexico
Hermosillo (Mexico), January 28 (EFE). – A Mexican-American family of nine has been isolated and vaccinated along with their ten pets after health officials confirmed through laboratory tests that a gray fox had infected their dog with domestic rabies, a Husky breed, on the coast of Hermosillo, the northwestern Sonoran capital mexico. The contagion happened between December and January in the Bahía de Kino community in Buenos Aires, when the Crutchfield family noticed mood swings in one of their 10 pets, a husky dog who lived in a property with other pugs and nine people from several addresses. Yésica Guadalupe Pacheco Guillen recalled that on January 4, Lucky’s dog attacked her mother-in-law, Pamela Crutchfield, biting her arm, sparking concerns about a possible infection. “It was the dog’s main symptom (wildness), very strange because it was very noble, it had never attacked anyone, no children, dogs or anything, the dog was isolated and after two days we went looking for the vaccine because of the The dog showed more symptoms, she seemed nervous and very lost in vision, she drank a lot of water, although many believe that they are frothing and not drinking water, but that is not true,” Pacheco said. The Sonoran Department of Health took samples from the husky dog “Lucky” analyzed in a laboratory in the United States, with the result being positive for the identified antigenic characterization of the V7 variant, a species associated with rabies the gray fox endemic to the desert region of northwestern Mexico. “They give us the news that she has tested positive for rabies, it was a very hard blow for us, very scary, my mother-in-law was very scared but she had already with hers n vaccinations started, the same day they come for the dead dog, they vaccinate all the dogs in the house and they also vaccinate the children who were most exposed,” Pacheco added. Carolina Araiza, Director General of Animal Welfare and Welfare in the Government of Sonora, recognized that dog and cat overpopulation is a problem that has plagued the Mexican state in the northwest of the country for many years due to the lack of application of public measures. In this sense, he recalled that they are currently working on animal reproduction control campaigns, such as sterilization and vaccination campaigns, and for which the support of society is required. Currently, the Department of Health of this body maintains an epidemiological surveillance of the nine members of the Crutchfield family; in addition to a dozen pets on his property in Bahía de Kino. Likewise, due to this event, the authorities announced massive vaccination campaigns in Hermosillo, on the coast and in rural areas. Recently, the National Committee for Epidemiological Surveillance (Conave) issued the Epidemiological Notice of Human Rabies in Mexico following the recent case of rabies detected in a dog in Sonora; the contagion confirmed by the urban fauna in Nayarit due to a person attacked by a cat with no previous vaccination history, the reporting of two confirmed cases and one probable, followed by the reporting of three other suspects in January 2023 due to bat aggression in Oaxaca. (c) EFE Agency