Courtesy: Holly Kuchera. Dreamstime.

By Angela Kazmierczak

Cypress County discontinues active rabies testing program

May 2, 2023 | 3:58 PM

CYPRESS COUNTY, AB – Rabies is a viral disease that can be transmitted to animals and humans, and it affects the central nervous system, causing disease in the brain and death.

In Alberta, bats are the only carrier of rabies.

But between the 1970s and 1990s, an outbreak amongst skunks occurred, leading the Alberta government and municipal government to begin a testing and surveillance program.

This surveillance program is now being discontinued in counties across Alberta, including in Cypress County.

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For many years, municipalities would randomly trap, euthanize and send skunks for sampling.

But counties will no longer be actively testing for rabies, only passively. This is due to an active case not being detected since 1993.

Lisa Sulz, Cypress County’s agricultural supervisor, says the effectiveness of the program was also in question.

“The province has just decided that because we weren’t even trapping enough to get a good account of what’s out there with the plan they had in place, it just wasn’t effective anymore and there hasn’t been active cases,” said Sulz.

Sulz says the Alberta government will review this change after three years, or sooner, if risk increases.

Currently, the skunk rabies variant remains in Saskatchewan and Montana, which may be a source of future outbreaks.