The Suffolk County Department of Health says a stray cat found in Deer Park has tested positive for rabies.<\/p>\n
\tThis is the first confirmed case of locally acquired terrestrial rabies in a feral cat and the 12th case in wildlife in the county.<\/p>\n
\u00a0As News 12 has reported 11 raccoons tested positive for the virus this year.<\/p>\n
\tRabies is a viral disease transmitted from infected mammals to humans. Left untreated, it can lead to death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\tEarly symptoms include irritability, headache, fever, and sometimes itching at the site of exposure. Within days, the disease progresses to paralysis, spasms of the throat muscles, convulsions, delirium, and death.<\/p>\n
Health officials are working with the USDA, to conduct a Racoon Rabies Control Program which comprises enhanced surveillance of the raccoon population to identify areas where the disease may be present.<\/p>\n
\tThey’re also distributing oral rabies vaccine (ORV) baits in the Towns of Babylon, Huntington, Smithtown, and Islip to prevent the spread of rabies.<\/p>\n
\tThe baits contain a vaccine that, when consumed by a raccoon, will vaccinate the animal against the rabies virus. The goal of the Racoon Rabies Control Program is containment and elimination of terrestrial rabies in local wild animal populations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Suffolk County Department of Health says a stray cat found in Deer Park has tested positive for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[135121,97,39142],"class_list":["post-247341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-feral-cat","tag-health","tag-rabies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}