Natalia Vitela / Reform Agency
Monday, January 02, 2023 | five pm
Mexico City.- The minors in Oaxaca who were bitten by a bat on December 1, 2022, one of whom died on December 28, contracted rabies, said Gabriel García, head of the General Directorate of Epidemiology.
“The result of this unfortunate bite of these minors is precisely rabies; the v3 variant that belongs to a species of bat, which is hematophagous, that means that it eats blood, it likes blood. So that is precisely the diagnosis that was prepared from the sample, let’s say that it was obtained from the sample that we received from the autopsy of the minor who unfortunately died,” he said at a press conference.
The expert indicated that the sample was analyzed based on two techniques. “First by direct immunofluorescence and then this agent, this rabies virus, was genotyped. A specific genetic sequence is still pending, but in the end it would only be the corroboration of this diagnosis that we already have and that already by two direct techniques It has already been identified that it is the rabies virus coming from this blood-sucking bat,” he said.
As recently as December 29, state authorities had reported that the first laboratory test carried out on the child who died after being bitten by a bat in Oaxaca had been negative for human rabies.
However, the Deputy Director General of Health Services of Oaxaca, Jesús Alejandro Ramírez Figueroa, specified that the diagnosis of rabies had not been ruled out.
He added that some samples could give a false negative, even due to the transportation of the sample, in this case, from Oaxaca to Mexico City, since the virus could be inactivated during the course.
Karime Unda, head of the Ministry of the Environment in Oaxaca, assured that the behavior of the bat is being studied, because it is not common for it to bite humans.
“99 percent of the cases that occur in rabies in humans are mainly from domestic animals, such as cats and dogs. 1 percent is from wild animals, and in very few cases it is from bats,” he said.
He affirmed that when a bat has the virus it does not live more than two months, so if the colony of bats presented this virus it has already died, so there should be no psychosis.
The boy and his two sisters were bitten by a bat on December 1 in the community of Palo de Lima, in San Lorenzo Texmelucan.
The 2-year-old girl left the “Dr. Aurelio Valdivieso” Civil Hospital on December 30, after being discharged, considering that she is out of danger and responding favorably to prophylactic treatments against said condition.
Although she will be sent home, it was stated that she will receive medical follow-up and is still missing a dose of anti-rabies medication.
Meanwhile, the 8-year-old sister will remain admitted to this hospital, where she receives assistance from a mechanical ventilator.
In recent days, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, confirmed that there is a case of rabies in Nayarit, of a 29-year-old woman bitten by a semi-domestic cat. Like the children, she lives in a rural community.
