Health officials are working to alert hundreds of people in 38 states and seven countries who may have been exposed to rabies in bat-infested cabins in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park over the past few months. None of the bats found in some of the eight linked cabins at Jackson Lake Lodge had tested positive for rabies. The other bats weren't killed but were shooed out through cabin doors and windows. Health officials deemed it better safe than sorry to alert everybody that they might have been exposed by being bitten or scratched. When people are sleeping, a bat bite or scratch can go unseen and unnoticed. Bats are a frequent vector of the rabies virus. Once symptoms occur, muscle aches, vomiting, or itching, rabies is almost always fatal in humans. The cash-strapped CDC is contacting the foreign visitors. Wyoming Map

Last year a child in Ontario, Canada died from rabies after being exposed to a bat in their bedroom. The family woke up with a bat in their bedroom, but the parents did not see signs of a bite or scratches on their child and did not get a rabies vaccine. This death was the first domestically-acquired case of human rabies in Ontario since 1967. Link: Ontario Child Dies of Rabies.