Ontario’s rabies numbers continue to trend downward. For the first six months of 2020 there were 450 samples submitted for testing, resulting in 10 positive cases. There were nine cases in bats and one in a skunk.
That’s down from 550 samples submitted and 19 positive test results from the same period last year. And it’s not as though people just aren’t reporting it: testing suspected cases of rabies is mandatory in Canada.
Ontario used to have much more substantial problems with rabies, an almost-invariably fatal disease spread by bites. In the 1980s there were thousands each year: as many as 3,600, mostly in raccoons, in 1986. But a bait program to spread the vaccine in 1989 has proved highly successful.
