Office of Communicable Diseases

Rabies

Animal Rabies Surveillance in Rhode Island

Surveillance Methods:

The first case of the raccoon adapted strain of rabies virus in RI, was documented in 1994 January. In 1994 and 1995 extensive wildlife capture and surveillance testing was conducted to track the spread of raccoon rabies among wildlife. Starting at the north end of the state the raccoon rabies epizootic (epidemic in animals) rapidly extended southward and in a span of two years every city and town had been impacted by raccoon rabies. Since 1996 routine surveillance testing is no longer conducted as the epizootic is well established in wild life populations throughout RI. Animal capture and testing is done now solely to inform clinical management decisions by physicians and veterinarians in a situation where an animal puts a human or pet in jeopardy. The Rhode Island Department of Health Laboratory does all animal testing for rabies in Rhode Island. Computerized records are kept at the Health Laboratory and reports of positive animals by county are sent weekly to the national surveillance database at CDC (the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control). The results of these examinations are also reported to the Office of Communicable Diseases for individual case management to include risk assessment, risk communication and recommendations for post exposure prophylaxis with rabies vaccine and immune globulin as necessary.

The results of rabies diagnostic tests as displayed in the following charts therefore are a measure of rabies related effort by a statewide network of professionals such as animal control officers, conservation officers, veterinarians etc. involved in rabies control and prevention activities. As such the data should not be construed to reflect a population based sampling of animals. For this reason incidence and prevalence of rabies in wildlife or any trends in species specific incidence/prevalence calculated from these data would also not be valid. The data displayed in the linked tables represent the number of laboratory confirmed cases (numerator) by the number submitted for testing (denominator) by species, by city/town. Data will be displayed at 6 monthly intervals.