Despite a seemingly high number of bats testing positive for rabies on Vancouver Island, experts say the public is not at increased risk of contracting the potentially fatal infection.
Last week, a Ucluelet man was bitten outside his home late at night. Gilbert Deforge was standing by a fire hanging out with friends about 2:30 a.m. last Thursday when he was bitten by what he suspected was a spider.
“Next thing I know I felt this burning pain in my leg,” Deforge said.
He went inside to have a look at his injury that was already starting to swell.
At the urging of his wife, he went to Tofino General Hospital, where a doctor told him he had been bitten by a bat, based on the puncture wound. Deforge received several shots straight into the affected area as treatment for potential rabies exposure.
“I’m feeling exceptionally lucky. It’s a good thing that my wife acted when she did,” Deforge said. “I probably would have left it.”
Island Health has received about 560 reports of humans coming into contact with bats in the past two months, following the death of 21-year-old Nick Major, who died on July 13 after having brief contact with a bat in mid-May.
The number of cases reported is 20 times higher than historical levels of reporting, but the health authority believes the increase can be attributed to a greater awareness, rather than an increasing number of interactions with bats or higher rates of rabies in the animal.
In 285 of the cases reported, people received rabies post-exposure prophylaxis treatment as a precaution. The rest were deemed not to be at risk of contracting the infection.
In cases of human contact, 65 bats were tested, and an unknown number were also submitted to veterinarians in cases where there was only contact with animals, according to Island Health. The health authority is aware of five bats testing positive for rabies.
Two of those were found this month on school grounds in the Greater Victoria area, and another was found in the Denman Island area in mid-August.
Estraven Lupino-Smith, bat stewardship co-ordinator for Habitat Acquisition Trust, agrees that the increase in reports of rabid bats is due to a greater public awareness, not an increased risk to the public. The stewardship organization organizes bat counts at known roosts and monitors a few thousand bats at 20 to 30 roost sites, mostly located in the Capital Regional District.
“It appears we’re having more rabid bats, but that’s not the case,” Lupino-Smith said. “I think what’s happened is that, because there was a fatality, people are testing all the bats they find now.
“In general we're getting a lot more reports of dead bats.”
To determine whether the incidence of rabies in bats is actually increasing, large-scale testing of living bats would need to be done, Lupino-Smith said.
Bats are the only animals in the province that carry rabies, and only an estimated 0.5 per cent of bats carry the infection, according to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. The rate jumps to 13 per cent for bats sent for testing, because bats that come into contact with humans or domestic animals are more likely to be carrying the viral infection.
She recommends avoiding contact with dead bats and safely disposing of them, either by burying them or wrapping the animals in a couple of plastic bags and putting them in the garbage.
“If they have had contact, that’s when it becomes a public health issue,” she said. Anyone who has had contact should go to a physician to determine whether they are at risk of contracting rabies.
