A hundred and thirty-two dogs had to be vaccinated against rabies again

**Prearrival rabies vaccination is required for dogs imported into the United
States from countries at high risk for dog-maintained rabies virus variants.**

The requirement assumes the vaccination worked. **Some commercial rabies
vaccines used outside the United States might not provide adequate
protection.**

What was found

**During August 2021–May 2024, a total of 132 dogs imported from high-risk
countries and vaccinated outside the United States with a potentially
ineffective vaccine were identified and revaccinated.**

A hundred and thirty-two dogs that had satisfied the import requirement on
paper, and were not reliably protected.

The stakes are specific: the United States eliminated dog-maintained rabies
decades ago, and the import rules exist to keep it that way. A single
inadequately vaccinated dog incubating rabies is how a variant gets
reintroduced.

Why it was possible to find them

**Requiring detailed information about importers and dogs' vaccination
histories permits targeted interventions if specific vaccine products are
suspected to be ineffective.**

That is the whole lesson, and it is about record-keeping rather than about
rabies.

Collecting the product used, not merely the fact of vaccination, means
that when a particular vaccine falls under suspicion the affected animals can
be identified and dealt with — retrospectively, across three years of imports.

A system that recorded only "vaccinated: yes" would have had no way to find
these 132 dogs at all.

*Source: Freedman MS, Swisher SD, Wallace RM, et al. Notes from the Field:
Heightened Precautions for Imported Dogs Vaccinated with Potentially
Ineffective Rabies Vaccine — United States, August 2021–April 2024. MMWR,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.*