The Suffolk County Health Services Department begins the distribution of baits of the oral vaccine against rabies (ORV) in the towns of Babylon, Huntington, Smithtown and Islip, starting on Tuesday, September 2, 2025, to prevent the spread of rabies in Mapaches (Raccoons).
The distribution will be made from Monday to Friday, from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, every week for three or four weeks. All baits are expected to be distributed during the month of September. The baits contain a vaccine that, when ingested by a mapache, immunizes it against the rabies virus.
The ORV distribution occurs after months of reinforced surveillance since last January in response to the reappearance of land rabies in Nassau County.
“The security of our residents is vital, so we launched the Rabia control program in Mapaches of Suffolk County in a preventive way,” said Suffolk executive, Ed Romaine.
The objective of Raccoon Rabies Control Program, carried out in collaboration with the National Program for the Rabies of the Wildlife Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, is to contain and eliminate earth rage in wild animals populations.
“While rage is considered endemic in the state of New York and throughout the country, this does not happen in Suffolk County thanks to the prevention initiatives implemented for decades,” said Dr. Gregson Pigott, Suffolk Health Commissioner. “This is public health in action.”
Suffolk reported its first rabid mapache since 2009 on January 28, 2025, and since then has reported 8 additional rabid mapaches that tested positive for the virus. Two Mapaches recently gave positive, both from the Amityville area. Eight of the nine rabid mapaches reported in this Long Island County this year were found in the Amityville area, and one in Deer Park.
According to Stephen Kane, Chief of Public Health of Suffolk, September is the ideal time for bait with ORV, since young mapaches born in spring are already looking for food alone.
Kane explained that the four localities of the West are in the sights because they have found rabid mapaches in western Sffolk and Nassau County. The ORV distribution points are chosen to create a barrier of vaccinated animals that avoids the spread of the rabies virus to the east.
As of September 2, the health department staff will manually launch bait envelopes with Orv from county vehicles that circulate slowly and are marked in sinks, storm drains, forests, shrubs and hedges in residential areas and any other place that mapaches can frequent.
Approximately 250,000 baits will be distributed throughout the zone of baits. Distribution or business or residents will not be interrupted.
The baits are the size and shape of a ketchup package and are sprinkled with a layer of fishmeal with an unpleasant smell, but that the mapaches love!
They are mainly designed to attract Mapaches and are not harmful to humans or pets. The label of each bait packages says “Antirrabic vaccine vector of living vaccinia not to disturb 1-877-722-6725” (“Rabies Vaccine Live Vaccinia Vector do not disturb 1-877-722-6725”). The phone number connects to the vaccine manufacturer.
