A child in the Canadian province of Ontario has died from rabies after being exposed to a bat in their bedroom, Canadian health officials have said.
The death was made public by Dr Malcolm Lock of the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit, who told councillors at a board meeting on Wednesday that the unnamed child was exposed to the virus in an area north of Sudbury.
“They woke up with a bat in their bedroom,” Dr Lock said, adding that the parents did not see signs of a bite or scratches and did not get the child a rabies vaccine as a result.
It marks the first domestically-acquired case of human rabies in Ontario since 1967.
The child, whose age was not shared by officials, was taken to hospital after the incident in early September and later died.
Rabies is a rare but deadly viral disease that can be spread to humans from an infected animal – such as bats, coyotes, foxes or raccoons – most commonly through its saliva.
The disease, which can cause severe damage to the brain and the spinal cord, nearly always causes death once symptoms have appeared, according to the World Health Organization.
Dr Lock said the percentage of bats with rabies in the southern Ontario region he oversees has increased from less than 10% to 16% in recent years.
“It’s extremely important that anyone who has a form of exposure [to bats] seeks medical attention,” he said, adding that treatment and vaccination should be quickly sought, even if bite marks aren’t immediately visible.
According to Health Canada, the Canadian government’s health department, cases of rabies among humans in the country are rare.
Since reporting began in 1924, there have been 28 cases of rabies across six provinces, all of which were fatal.
The health agency said that nearly all human cases of rabies in Canada are a result of exposure to bats, or due to exposure to rabies while in another country.
In the US, fewer than 10 people die from rabies each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This is a “dramatic decline” from the 1960s, the healthy agency said, driven largely by prevention efforts.
There were 25 cases of human rabies documented in the US from 2009 to 2018, the CDC said, seven of which were contracted outside of the country.
Like Canada, humans in the US are more commonly exposed to rabies through rabid bats, which are found in all US states except Hawaii.
In the UK, all rabies since 1902 were a result of an infection that occurred abroad, according to data by the British government. There have been 26 cases reported since 1946, all involving people who got infected outside of the UK.
The latest documented case was in 2018 involving a traveller who was bit by a cat in Morocco.