Man Dead of Rabies After Waking to Bat Biting Neck, Illinois’ First Recorded Human Case in Almost 70 Years

An Illinois man died of rabies after he woke to find a bat in his room, biting his neck. It was the first recorded human case in the state since 1954.

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A man from Lake County, Illinois died from rabies a month after he woke up to find a bat in his room, biting his neck. It marks the first human case of the virus in the state since 1954.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, the man, who was in his 80s, declined postexposure treatment for the disease despite testing positive. A month after exposure, the man experienced debilitating neck pain, headache, numbness in his fingers, and difficulty speaking and controlling his arms, health officials said. The department said other people also had contact with secretions from the man and had to be given rabies preventative treatment.

The bat reportedly was part of a larger colony that was living inside the man’s home.

“Rabies has the highest mortality rate of any disease,” the IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in the news release. “However, there is a life-saving treatment for individuals who quickly seek care after being exposed to an animal with rabies.”

Human infections from the disease remain rare in the U.S., according to the CDC, with one to three cases reported each year. 60,000 Americans still receive post-exposure rabies vaccines each year.

Public health officials in Illinois cautioned that even though people are usually aware when they have been bitten by a bat, that they have “have very small teeth and the bite mark may not be easy to see.” Most rabies infections in America stem from bats, with a total of 30 bats testing positive for rabies this year in Illinois.

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