> Then he went to hospital on back-to-back visits, first getting a presumed diagnosis of herpes gingivostomatitis, a viral infection of the mouth and gums, then returning the following day after the right side of his face went weak, the journal states.
I know the timeline could not be accurate, but if they mentioned what happened with the bat why wasn’t rabies the very first thing they tested for? Even if the parents visited a clinic right after the fact I fear this would have ended up the same way, unfortunately, especially because rabies symptoms show up after some time
Bats are the most common carriers of rabies, and also you should watch out for any wild animal that's too comfortable getting close to a human. Especially more shy ones like raccoons and such.
If the hospital knew he came in contact with a wild animal they would have put him on the rabies vaccine regardless of any sort of rabies testing.
Bats are the number one carrier of rabies and their tiny bites are really easy to miss. If you touch a wild bat, you need to go to the hospital.
Any direct human contact with a bat is an indication for rabies postexposure prophylaxi - medical treatment given immediately after potential exposure to a rabid animal.
The article should have also recommended they safely isolate the animal to have it tested for rabies.
This phrase is unnecessarily complicated, I expect something easier to understand from the BBC. It can't be stressed often enough: if there's even the slightest suspicion that someone has been bitten, scratched etc. by any wild animal or even "just" a feral cat/dog, get them a rabies vaccine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies_vaccine) immediately. Maybe the term "prophylaxi" (shouldn't it be prophylaxis?) is preferred nowadays because of the unnecessary controversies over vaccines, but I won't mince words here...
That's worse than Ebola, anthrax, SARS, MERS, and anything else you can think of.
> if there's even the slightest suspicion that someone has been bitten, scratched etc
With Bats, always considered you've been bitten. Especially in situations like "woke up with a bat in the bedroom" - unless you can confirm the type of bat, take this as yes, it's hospital time
As noticed by the article, bat bites can be pretty painless
Yes, this is the correct take here
This is one of those things that will kill you and it will hurt the whole time you're dying
Though on the good side it does away with antivaxxers pretty quickly
and (if there are too many of them) the rest of society
I woke up to a bat in my house. Local animal control told us to go to the ER immediately and get the rabies cycle started.
Don’t play games.
(I don't much like this Internet confusion where half the time people don't know what country they're reading about. At least this article has "Canadian" as the first word of the title. Here in Britain I think rabies in bats is a recent thing and even today rabies is very rare in bats.)