Sick kitten in Nebraska sparked efforts to stop spread of rabies

The 2023 illness and death in Nebraska of a stray kitten infected with rabies set off a large-scale effort to discover how the feline became infected in the first place.

That's because the strain of rabies the 6-week old kitten carried had never been detected so far west: The nearest other cases of the Eastern raccoon rabies virus variant (RRVV) were on the East Coast, almost 850 miles away, investigators explained.

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