Doctors in Massachusetts are now reporting a spike in child pneumonia cases — after health officials in Ohio said there were ‘extremely high’ numbers of this disease in one of their counties amid an outbreak in China.

Dr John Kelley, from western Massachusetts, said his practice was seeing a lot of children coming in with pneumonia or suffering from a combination of RSV and other respiratory illnesses.

Health officials in Warren County, Ohio, 30 miles north of Cincinnati, said there have been 142 pediatric cases of the condition — dubbed ‘white lung syndrome’ — since August.

‘Not only is this above the county average, it also meets the Ohio Department of Health definition of an outbreak,’ the county’s health department said Wednesday.

The spread of cases has raised fears that an American outbreak of the infection that has overwhelmed hospitals China could hit this winter. Several European countries are battling similar crises.

But a source at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that,  nationally, ‘nothing is out of the ordinary’.

An ‘ongoing investigation’ is underway in Ohio into what is triggering the wave of illness, but officials do not think it is a new respiratory disease — and instead blame a mixture of several common infections all hitting at once.

Patients so far have tested positive for mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterial lung infection for which some antibiotics are useless, strep, and adenovirus, a normally benign respiratory infections.

The average age of patients is eight, though some are as young as three. 

There are several theories, one of which is that children’s immunity has been weakened by lockdowns, mask-wearing and school closures during the pandemic — leaving them more vulnerable to seasonal illnesses.

Bacterial respiratory infections usually flare up every few years, normally as people are recovering from a wave of flu or other viral illnesses. 

Mycoplasma pneumoniae infections tend to peak every three to seven years, the CDC says, with the illness having not peaked since the Covid pandemic hit in 2020.

Most infections are mild, doctors say, but those who have recently recovered from a respiratory infection are at higher risk. 

In a release from the Warren County Health District, officials said: ‘We do not think this is a novel/new respiratory disease, but rather a large uptick in the number of pneumonia cases normally seen at one time.’

It added: ‘As we approach the holiday season, when many of us will be gathering together with family and friends, please remember to take necessary precautions to protect your health.

‘Wash your hands, cover your cough, stay home when ill and stay up to date on vaccines.’

Doctors say patients are mostly suffering from a fever, cough and fatigue. 

It is unclear if any deaths have resulted from the illness and officials have not responded to requests for more information.

Pediatricians in western Massachusetts are also reporting a spike of sick and hospitalized children with ‘walking pneumonia’ symptoms — a milder form of pneumonia where patients have a lower fever and cough that does not trigger phlegm.

Dr John Kelley, from Redwood Pediatrics in East Longmeadow, told Western Mass News: ‘This is the season for RSV and we’re seeing a whole lot of it… a lot of kids with upper viral respiratory infections, cough, runny nose, some fevers and the thinking with RSV is that it can cause lower viral respiratory infections, so they get spread to your lungs.’

Dr Kelley said most of the young patients’ illnesses are mild and they get better within days.

He said 80 percent of the kids with walking pneumonia develop the infection as a result of first having RSV, while the remaining 20 percent of the cases are usually attributed to bacteria, which can be treated with antibiotics.

In Ohio, the county was first alerted to the spike after schools said they were recording more children off sick than normal.

The 142 cases were reported to the county from multiple school districts across their area. There are 12 school districts in Warren County, Ohio.

A spokeswoman for the county health department said this was the first year they had recorded a pneumonia outbreak.

She added that other indicators were showing ‘typical resporatory pathogen [spread] for this time of year’.

A spokeswoman for the Ohio Health Department added that statewide they were not recording ‘unusual numbers of respiratory disease outbreaks for this time of year’.

CDC data also shows pneumonia fatalities are not surging out of the ordinary for this time of year nationwide.

Data on deaths from pneumonia and the flu among children and teenagers which they record shows the figures are at typical levels for this time of year.

Speaking to local reporters, Warren County’s medical director Dr Clint Koenig said: ‘We have seen hospitalizations [for child pneumonia] tick up in the last couple of weeks so we do ask parents to be vigilant.

‘Our school districts have called in starting roughly in August, but really picking up in mid to late October.

‘We’ve also been noticing a lot of cases of kids being absent and the resulting diagnosis being pneumonia.’

A source at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said their data showed childhood pneumonia levels in other states were following ‘seasonal trends’.

‘Nothing is flagging out of the ordinary, but we are continuing to monitor,’ they said. 

Mycoplasma pneumoniae normally causes a mild flu-like illness, sometimes called ‘walking pneumonia’. Cases are most common in younger children.

Some antibiotics, such as penicillin, have no effect.

Strep also normally causes a mild illness and tends to leave patients with sore throats. It’s more common among those aged five to 15 years old.

And adenovirus, which has also been detected in patients, causes symptoms similar to the common cold.

It was thought to be one of the viruses driving a spike in childhood hepatitis cases last year in children in the US.

Dr Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert from Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, told: ‘I would caution against extrapolating one Ohio county to a country of 330million people.’

But he would not be entirely surprised if ‘some places in the US are above baseline’ this year — ‘but I don’t think it will be everywhere in the United States’.

Dr Adalja believes the pneumonia outbreaks cropping up around the world could be due to the ‘cyclical’ nature of mycoplasma.

‘Mycoplasma goes through epidemic cycles every few years and that may be what’s occurring globally at the moment.’

He said China may be getting hit by a double-whammy of viral and bacterial infections.

China is entering its first winter without pandemic restrictions, and is reporting surges in Covid, flu and RSV as well as mycoplasma.

The US, Canada and Europe — where restrictions were lifted earlier — were hit by massive upswings in those viruses last year.

‘So what’s happening in China makes sense’, Dr Adalja said, adding: ‘Last year we were dominated by so much Covid, flu and RSV when we opened up.’

He said he thinks this year’s winter outbreak will be ‘less severe’ that last year’s, when thousands of children were hospitalized with RSV and flu.

But Dr Adalja admitted that lockdowns have contributed to the emerging global phenomenon.

‘When children are born they haven’t experienced any infectious diseases so more of them you have in population so lower threshold for outbreak to start.

‘That group of children born provide new people for illnesses. The pandemic allowed the number of these susceptible people to build up over years.’

Dr Scott Roberts, an infectious diseases expert at Yale School of Medicine, Connecticut, said the uptick in cases was likely still being driven by weakened immunity in children.

He told DailyMail.com: ‘This is probably a recurrence of known pathogens that are hitting us a bit harder because of low immunity to them.’

He suggested children’s immune systems could still be suffering from the effects of Covid restrictions which blocked their exposure to ‘good germs’ for building immunity. He also pointed out that immunity wanes over time.

It comes after the Netherlands and Denmark also said they were recording mysterious spikes in pneumonia cases, many of which are being attributed in part to mycoplasma.

CDC director Dr Mandy Cohen said while testifying on Capitol Hill today that the uptick in respiratory illnesses in China was not down to a novel pathogen.

Dr Cohen told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee: ‘We do not believe this is a new or novel pathogen.

‘We believe this is all existing [pathogens] — meaning Covid, flu, RSV, mycoplasma. But they are seeing an upsurgence. 

The CDC has been coming under pressure to reveal everything it knows about the China pneumonia outbreak, with members of Congress sending a letter to the agency yesterday.

Addressed to Dr Cohen, they said: ‘If the CDC is to regain credibility with the American people, it must be transparent and forthcoming with the information it has on public helth threats facing our nation.’

China has been recording a surge in childhood cases of pneumonia since May which only came to light last month after it was reported in Taiwan.

Health officials reported the cases to ProMED — the same system where Covid was first reported — saying there was a mystery pneumonia in the country.

Thousands of children are reported to have been taken to hospitals while sick in north and eastern areas of the country including Beijing, Shanghai and the province of Liaoning.

Chinese officials have insisted the wave of infections is not being caused by a new disease but instead is the country’s ‘exit wave’ from the pandemic.

Lockdowns weakened the immunity of children because they were not exposed to the normal ‘good’ germs required for building a strong immune system.

China has claimed that the outbreak of a mysterious pneumonia sweeping through schools is not the result of a new virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said it had seen data from China suggesting the spike in respiratory illnesses was due to common infections rebounding after the country’s brutal lockdowns.

Chinese health officials say the outbreak – which is “overwhelming” some hospitals and pushing schools to the brink of closure – is the result of a mix of infections caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae, RSV, adenovirus and the flu.

But the WHO is calling for full cooperation from China, which covered up the 2003 SARS outbreak and failed to warn the world about Covid for months, leaving countries flat-footed in their responses.

Local media reported earlier this week that hospitals in Beijing and 800 kilometers northeast of Liaoning were “overwhelmed by sick children” with unusual symptoms, including inflammation of the lungs and high fever, but no cough.

The situation prompted an alert from ProMed – a disease surveillance system that similarly raised the alarm about a mysterious infection in Wuhan in the final days of 2019, which would later evolve into the global Covid pandemic.

The WHO said on Wednesday it had sent an official request to China for additional information laboratory results of reported cases and data on recent trends in circulating respiratory pathogens.

The health agency held a teleconference with Chinese health authorities from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Beijing Children’s Hospital on Thursday.

The WHO said: ‘Chinese authorities have advised that no unusual or new pathogens or unusual clinical presentations have been detected, including in Beijing and Liaoning, but only the aforementioned general increase in respiratory illness due to multiple known pathogens.

“They further stated that the increase in respiratory diseases has not caused the number of patients to exceed hospital capacity.”

But local media reports, including Taiwanese newspaper FTV News, claimed hospitals were “overwhelmed”.

The Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said more than 3,500 cases of “respiratory tract infection” had been admitted to Beijing Children’s Hospital in early October, Radio Free Asia reported.

An employee at Beijing Friendship Hospital’s pediatrics department said there had to be a 24-hour wait before any emergencies were noticed.

Chinese authorities also told WHO that enhanced outpatient and inpatient surveillance had been implemented since mid-October, including for the first time Mycoplasma pneumoniae.

It appears that the WHO has not independently confirmed China’s claims.

Walking pneumonia, which usually affects younger children, causes sore throat, fatigue and coughing that can last for months. It’s called walking pneumonia because symptoms are usually mild enough for patients to continue walking around.

In severe cases, the disease can become pneumonia.

The strain is reportedly growing in China as the country enters its first winter without strict Covid lockdowns.

Similar patterns were seen globally as measures to combat the spread of Covid – such as face masks, social distancing and lockdowns – interrupted the spread of typical seasonal viruses.

The US and Britain saw spikes in infections such as RSV and flu after pandemic rules were lifted.

As a result, immunity against these insects dropped in all populations, meaning people became more vulnerable to insects as measures were lifted.

China told WHO that hospitalizations of children have increased since May due to Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia, and since October RSV, adenovirus and influenza virus.

Professor Francois Balloux, an expert in computational biology at University College London, said the phenomenon of ‘lockdown exit’ waves of infections had also occurred in Britain, and that China could experience a similar pattern on a larger scale.

“Other countries, including Britain, experienced large waves of respiratory infections and hospital admissions in children during their first winter after pandemic restrictions were lifted,” he said.

“Given that China has experienced a much longer and more severe lockdown than any other country in the world, it was expected that those ‘lockdown exit’ waves in China could be substantial.”

China has previously been criticized for downplaying the original SARS epidemic in 2003 and the Covid pandemic in late 2019 – both new viruses that caused pneumonia.

WHO China, the regional arm of the United Nations-backed health agency, has already tried to play down the WHO’s broader request for information, calling it a “routine” procedure.

British infectious disease experts said that as data continued to emerge, China must get a “grip” on the outbreak and do so in a “transparent” manner.

The WHO said it was “closely monitoring the situation” and “in close contact with national authorities in China.”

It would provide updates as needed, it added.

When Dorian Wilkerson got back in touch with Shareza Jackson 20 years after they first met, she thought she had finally found her Prince Charming – until the whirlwind romance turned into a real-life nightmare.

Jackson, 44, had initially known Wilkerson in high school and decades later remembered him as good-looking and a great athlete who played football and ran track.

In 2014, his clean-cut image and her fond memories came flooding back when he contacted her on Facebook. She was at a high point in her life – and quickly started to believe Wilkerson was the only missing puzzle piece.

She told DailyMail.com how excited when he told her about his work as a doctor at Emory Hospital, overjoyed to have found someone she believed shared her work ethic. 

But she claims their love turned sour when Jackson uncovered a slew of dirty secrets that her husband of six years had been hiding from her, leaving her devastated – and, by her own estimation, at least $1.4million poorer. 

Wilkerson was, in fact, no doctor. 

She claims her supposed knight in shining armor was nothing more than a serial fraudster who had been charged with assault and battery, family violence, stalking, theft and extortion. 

And she alleges she was far from the first victim of his deceit: other women emerged saying he had swindled them too. 

In March this year, she filed for divorce and in October filed a civil suit claiming that he conned her out of at least $1 million – on top of a $400,000 business investment.

She claims it was with her cash he opened a cosmetic clinic so he could take the profits, but alleges he also forged her name on documents to secure loans in her name – and in a final blow, claims she found out he wasn’t faithful.

In the lead-up to the pair reconnecting, the single mother was raising two teenage daughters alone while working at a Fortune 500 healthcare company as a regional director. She owned her own home, had two luxury cars and was also a published author. 

Jackson claims the first time they spoke, he told her that he was a medical doctor at Emory Hospital in Atlanta and an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control. She liked that he was accomplished, hard-working, and, like herself, was passionate about philanthropy. 

At the time, he was living in Atlanta and she was in Florida. But during a business trip she had to take across state, the pair finally met up. She claims he had picked her up in a Bentley at her hotel, and he was wearing medical scrubs. 

Before their dinner date, he allegedly took her back to his apartment – a ‘beautiful loft with stunning views of the park’, so he could get changed.

It didn’t take long for Jackson to become smitten. She says he was ‘intrigued’ by her and they appeared to share many of the same values. Wilkerson reminded her of her military father, with whom she has a close relationship.

‘He was tall, dark and handsome, and he was very accomplished,’ she says. ‘He was not just an MD but also a Ph.D. and attended these prestigious universities and would lecture around the country on vaccines and infectious disease.’

After kissing many toads, she thought she had found her Prince Charming. 

She claims he was loving and attentive and claims he put her on a pedestal, showering her with gifts and lavish trips.

On November 27, 2016, the pair wed at an exclusive venue in Fort Lauderdale, in front of 200 friends and family members.

Her two adult daughters were so taken by the man their mother loved, they legally changed their last names to match their new step-dad.

A year into their wedding bliss, she claims to have supported him in opening a cosmetic center that would offer breast augmentation, tummy tucks and Brazilian butt lifts. 

She claims his role at the center would be bringing the doctors in to do the procedures and manage the day-to-day operations.

Jackson, who was busy working her day job, claims she financially invested in Best U Now which would be located in Broward County, Florida. 

At his insistence, she allegedly gave him the funds to get started – by emptying her savings account and 401K. 

She estimates this figure overall grew to as much as $400,000. 

She claims she wasn’t actively involved in their business at first, but eventually she noticed that the center was losing money despite having a full roster of client bookings. 

To help their investment and keep their business afloat, she claims she left her corporate job to devote herself entirely to their cosmetic center.

When she started questioning Wilkerson about missing money, she claims he had an answer for everything. She began believing he was a ‘master manipulator.’

As their romance began to unravel, she alleges she started to hear stories about Wilkerson stealing money from other people. 

Several women allegedly deceived by Wilkerson reached out to tell her that ‘he’s a dangerous person and is not who he says he is.’ They warned her to be careful. 

One woman, who told Jackson that she is friends with Wilkerson’s first ex-wife sent her a text that Jackson shared with DailyMail.com.

She described Wilkerson as a master ‘con artist’. 

‘I have known him for 16 years and he has always been a liar and a con,’ she wrote.

Increasingly anxious at realizing the man she fell in love with seemed to be a con artist, Jackson’s worst fears were realized, she said, when she allegedly saw a text he’d sent to a male friend saying he didn’t need her anymore because ‘she’s broke’.

Jackson began digging into her husband. She was appalled to discover he was a convicted felon, who’d been arrested for fraud in 2002, battery and assault in 2007 and battery, assault and family violence in 2009 – and was still on probation. 

She obtained a report of his criminal history that dates back to 2001, provided to DailyMail.com, that was obtained through the clerk of courts in Atlantic City Probation (NJ) and clerk of courts in Georgia where he was facing a domestic battery charges. 

In August 2001, felony charges were filed against him for theft and extortion of more than $75,000 in Atlantic, New Jersey. He pled guilty and was convicted September 6, 2002 and was placed on probation, documents reveal.

In February 2007, he was booked on simple battery and released from prison on $5,000 bail, according to documents by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department in Georgia.

In February 2009, he was arrested for simple battery family violence and was released from prison on $10,000 bail, as per records from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department in Georgia.

He was also charged in August 2017 for speeding in Broward County, Florida and for careless driving in Pembroke Pines, Florida in January 2020, records show. 

According court documents by the Broward County Clerk of Courts obtained by DailyMail.com, Wilkerson hasn’t been employed since December 2022. 

She claims to have uncovered more disturbing evidence which included Wilkerson being fined for pretending to be a medical physician.

According to Jackson, she claims when she confronted him, he filed a ‘bogus’ police report against her having to do with their joint finances, and tried to get her arrested.

‘He’d always play the victim often and blame others,’ Jackson said of her experience. 

She shared an audio of her speaking with a former employee informing her that Wilkerson was signing her name and two other doctors from their cosmetic center on documents.

Upon learning this she also learned he was using her credit. She claims he accessed hundreds of thousands of dollars in her name. 

She tried to file restraining order against him – concerned for her safety and the safety of her two daughters- but was told the case is a civil matter that needed to be handled in the divorce proceedings.

His claim of being a medical doctor also to be part of the web of deceit.

On the cosmetic center’s BestUNow website, Wilkerson was referred to as ‘Doctor Body,’ and a ‘Rejuvenation Specialist and Cosmetic Analyst,’ but online records do not show him holding a medical license in the state of Florida or Georgia, contrary to what his LinkedIn profiles show.

The Florida Department of Health grew so incensed he was issued a cease and desist letter telling him to stop pretending he was. 

In October 2017, the Florida Department of Health issued a cease and desist to Wilkerson, cited by DailyMail.com. 

It states ‘the department has probable cause to believe that Wilkerson is not licensed by the the Department or the Board of Medicine and is practicing medicine and leading the public to believe he is a medical doctor’. 

The document was signed by the state surgeon general of the Florida Department of Health, Edwin Bruno.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official told DailyMail.com there is ‘no record of Dorian Wilkerson in any of their current CDC employee directories.’ 

 In December 2022, she says they closed the business.

‘When people start finding out about him he tries to silence them and goes after their livelihood and freedom,’ she said. 

She added: ‘Nothing ever happens to him and he continues to swindle women and business owners and scares them so they don’t come for him.’

According to Jackson, he is currently believed to be living with another woman.

In March, Jackson filed for divorce and in October filed a civil suit against her ex.

Florida divorce attorney Nydia Streets is handling the case. In the divorce filing obtained by DailyMail.com, Jackson made several allegations, including her ‘husband forged wife’s name on documents to obtain loans and for his own personal gain.’ 

In the court documents, she claimed Wilkerson ‘has a pattern of defrauding women and leaving them with high debt once he feels he can no longer benefit from them anymore.’

She alleged that ‘wife became aware husband was previously convicted for fraud, a conviction which husband downplayed and about which he misled wife’. 

According to the filing, she claimed ‘husband event went so far as to fabricate parts of his past to wife. For example, husband mispresented that he was formerly an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’. 

She also alleged that her her ‘committed adultery throughout their marriage. ‘Upon information and belief, several accusation of sexual harassment have been made against husband by third parties.’

Jackson said she is trying to rebuild her life and is relying on her faith and the strength of her family. In October, she published a book ‘Successful Women Get Played Too’.  

Asked if Jackson felt that Wilkerson ever loved her, she told DailyMail.com: ‘I don’t think a narcissist has the ability to love. They are self-centered and only think about themselves.’

DailyMail.com made numerous attempts to seek comment from Wilkerson. He declined to make a statement on the record.

U.S. health officials are preventing a rabies outbreak by dropping vaccines from planes as part of a half-billion-dollar federal program.

More than 9 million ketchup-packet-sized pieces of food containing vaccines have been distributed across the eastern United States to suppress the deadly neurological virus in raccoons and prevent it from killing people.

The packets come in two flavors specifically designed to appeal to the waste-diving mammal – vanilla and fishmeal – but ‘packet thieves’ who don’t need the rabies vaccine, such as gray squirrels and opossums, may make off with a few pieces .

The annual airdrop, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture since 1997, has stopped the spread of rabies westward across the U.S. but now hopes to eradicate the disease from raccoons in the East as well.

The news comes amid warnings from scientists that rabies-infected vampire bats are sneaking into North America via Mexico as habitats change due to climate change.

“What we weren’t able to do,” said Charles Rupprecht, former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rabies program. “is to eliminate the virus from every state where raccoon rabies currently occurs.”

The USDA this year renewed testing of a newer vaccine with a new flavor in an effort to attract more raccoons: marshmallow with powdered sugar, vegetable oil and a dark green food coloring.

“Our feelings are definitely not hurt when skunks, foxes or coyotes pick them up. And it is,” says wildlife biologist Jordona Kirby, field coordinator for the USDA’s National Rabies Management Program.

“So even though raccoons are the reservoir and spread rabies mainly in the east,” Kirby said NPR‘These other animals, just like any mammal, can contract rabies.’

Last year, researchers worked with the The University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory found that “competition with opossums” at least didn’t stop raccoons from getting their doses of the vaccine.

The researchers have proposed two solutions to get more raccoons vaccinated, as published this year in the Journal of Wildlife Managementless focused on the competition and more on the raccoons.

The first suggestion was “changing the bait matrix to make it more attractive to raccoons,” which meant even more design and flavor experimentation.

Their second new proposal: drop the oral vaccine packages in the winter months, when food is scarcer.to promote acceptance of bait by raccoons.”

Until now, the USDA’s oral vaccine drops have typically occurred between the months of July and October.

As of last July, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) began the next phase of their marshmallow trials – whichabout 3.5 million of the new oral vaccine bait, called ONRAB ORV, in parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

However, one other area will be the focus of their data collection for this field test.

“APHIS will conduct the final year of a small-scale project in Chattanooga this October,” USDA officials announced, “to evaluate the effectiveness of ONRAB’s distribution methods.”

Wildlife biologists working for APHIS in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will capture and test a random sample of raccoons and skunks after this year’s bait distribution to monitor their vaccination rates.

In rural areas, low-flying aircraft are used to distribute these oral vaccines from the air, equipped with an on-plane conveyor belt to automate and evenly distribute the vaccines at approximately 75 baits per square kilometer (29 per square mile).

In truly remote areas where raccoons are less common, including the spruce forests of northeastern Vermont, the USDA drops only about 37 baits per square kilometer (14 per square mile).

But in more urban areas, the USDA distribution hopes to reach as many as 150 oral vaccines per square kilometer (58 per square mile), dropped by helicopter in the suburbs and thrown into the backs of vans in the cities.

Bushes, sewer pipes under roads and bridges, and strip mall restaurant dumpsters are all prime locations.

“Any area that looks like raccoon habitat, we put it there,” wildlife biologist Kathy Nelson, who oversees the USDA’s National Rabies Management Program, told me. Wired.

Nelson said the USDA estimates that only 30 percent of raccoons in a region need to be vaccinated to stop the spread of the disease, and that a 60 percent vaccination rate could eliminate rabies from an entire area.

She hopes that new techniques can entice more beings to do this.

Rabies is a neurological virus transmitted through saliva that kills about 59,000 people a year worldwide, but only two to three deaths a year in the U.S. — thanks to the USDA’s multimillion-dollar program and other national efforts.

In the first half of the 20th century, the majority of rabid animals in the US were dogs, both pets and strays, until vaccine efforts against the disease in puppies succeeded in reducing these numbers in the 1950s and 1960s.

Today, the most common carriers are raccoons, skunks, foxes and bats, with the winged creatures increasingly becoming the leading cause of rabies deaths in the US.

As the vaccine bait decline continues, a statement from the USDA advises: ‘People and pets cannot contract rabies from contact with the bait, but are asked to leave the bait alone if they come into contact with it.’

“An intact bait is harmless, but it is difficult to know whether the bait leaked vaccine while on the ground,” department officials said. ‘If contact with bait occurs, the contact area should be rinsed immediately with warm water and soap.’

“Each bait has a toll-free number that people can call if they have additional questions about a bait contact.”