A mysterious, highly infectious virus is causing house rabbits throughout the U.S. to suddenly drop dead: “We tried to do CPR, but these rabbits were dead within minutes. They would convulse, scream horribly, and die”
Photo: Crezalyn Nerona Uratsu/Getty Images The deaths began on February 15: Ostensibly healthy bunnies plodding around per usual, eating normally, pooping regularly, and then the seizures started. “Someone saw them spasming and yelled,” recalled Lorelei D’Avolio, LVM, a certified veterinary practice manager with a veterinary-technician specialty in exotics at the Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine in Manhattan. “We tried to do CPR, but these rabbits were dead within minutes.
“We still have no idea where it originated,” Ralph Zimmerman, New Mexico state veterinarian, told the Cut. “It’s snowballed and moved like mad,” fanning out across the Southwest. So far in 2020, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture says it has confirmed RHDV2 at 146 domestic premises and wildlife sites in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Texas.
RHDV2 only affects rabbits, hares, and pikas, destroying cells in the liver and causing hepatitis. It also creates lesions on other organs — the heart, the lungs — that lead to internal bleeding, which in turn explains why some RHDV2-positive rabbits present with bloody fluid around their mouths and noses. It’s “not related in any way, shape, or form” to ebola, Jones stresses, but its effects on the body can look comparable: RHDV2 causes systemwide inflammation and, often, hemorrhaging.
Potentially, but not definitely, RHDV2’s widely variable death rate introduces yet another layer of chaos to the equation. RHDV2 kills many of its rabbit hosts, but those that survive, Zimmerman noted, “can shed from 30 days up to 105 days,” potentially passing on the virus.
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