43
Rabies baiting begins Monday in 3 counties
RELATED: How to handle rabies baits
COLUMBUS
Rabies baiting begins Monday in Northeast Ohio, including the tri-county area, and runs through Sept. 20.
The oral rabies vaccination operations will take place during the next month in 14 Northeast and eastern Ohio counties covering 4,334 square miles of the state’s northeastern and eastern border.
Bait distribution with the oral rabies vaccine Raboral V-RG will take place in all of Ashtabula, Columbiana, Jefferson, Mahoning and Trumbull counties and parts of Belmont, Carroll, Harrison, and Monroe counties.
In addition, for the second year in a row, a new oral rabies vaccine, ONRAB, will be field tested in parts of Lake, Portage, Geauga, Summit and Cuyahoga counties as part of a national trial involving five states, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
So far in 2013, five cases of rabies have been confirmed in the area, including four raccoons in Mahoning County and one cat in Trumbull County.
Rabies is a viral disease that affects mammals and people and is almost always fatal. Rabies vaccine baiting operations are intended to create an immune barrier to prevent the spread of raccoon- rabies variant into the rest of the state, health officials said.
The baiting program is a partnership involving the ODH, local health departments, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Wildlife Services programs.
Baits will be distributed by fixed-wing aircraft, helicopter and vehicles staffed by USDA and local health- department personnel.
Residents in the areas to be baited should be aware of low-flying aircraft and should keep children and pets away from the baits. Though the baits are not harmful to pets, dogs in particular are attracted to the baits and occasionally will eat them, officials said.
To help people keep the baits away from humans and pets, the ODH described the baits so they can be recognized.
The coated sachet, which will be distributed by aircraft, is about the size of a ketchup packet. It is white and rolled in a brown fishmeal glaze. In urban areas, where baits will be distributed by vehicle, the sachet will be inside a hard, brown fishmeal block, about 2-by-2-inches square.
The ONRAB blister pack, which will be distributed by aircraft and by vehicle in Lake, Portage, Geauga, Summit and Cuyahoga counties only, is about 1-by-2 inches and has a dark-green coloring and sweet-smelling waxy coating.
In Ohio, it is illegal to live- trap, move and release raccoons. Anyone dealing with a nuisance raccoon cannot relocate the animal. There are only two legal options for nuisance raccoons: Euthanize or release on the same property where they were live-trapped. Uninformed people who are relocating nuisance raccoons may be contributing to rabies crossing the barrier, health officials said.