Many friends are often afraid of getting rabies after being bitten and scratched by an animal, because rabies is an incurable disease, and once it develops, the disease progresses rapidly and death occurs quickly within a few days, which is a great disaster for the patient and the patient’s family. So, what is the case of rabies? Under what circumstances is it basically impossible to have rabies? First of all, it is important to know what kind of animal can transmit rabies? Animals with rabies virus can only spread rabies virus, mainly through the bite and infected humans, but also by the saliva with the virus through a variety of wounds and scratches, licked mucous membranes and skin infections. Rabies cases in China are mainly caused by canine injuries, accounting for about 90% of cases; followed by cats, accounting for about 5%, and other injury-causing animals including horses, squirrels, pigs, bats, monkeys and badgers. Post-exposure immunization against rabies is usually not required for exposure to rodents (e.g., rats), rabbits, or hares. Poultry (e.g., chickens and ducks), fish, insects, lizards, oysters, turtles, and snakes are not infected with and do not transmit the rabies virus. So, basically, don’t think about rabies if you were bitten and scratched by an animal such as a rat, rabbit, chicken, duck, turtle, or snake because there are no current cases of such an infection. However, if you have been bitten by a rat, you should be alert to renal syndrome hemorrhagic fever; if you have been bitten by a snake, you should be alert to the presence of venom. In addition, according to the size and depth of the wound, the appropriate wound treatment should be carried out, and tetanus vaccination should be administered if necessary. Secondly, what are the symptoms of rabies in people? Not everyone will develop after being exposed to a rabid animal, and it is related to the site of exposure, the size of the wound, the patient’s immune status, and whether the treatment is timely, etc. Because the rabies virus is neurophilic, it is easy to develop in the places where the nerves are densely distributed, such as the bite of the head, the face, the neck, and the fingers, the perineum, and so on. According to the 2018 WHO guidelines for post-exposure management of rabies, the incidence of morbidity in humans after being bitten by a sick dog is about 30-40%. The onset of rabies virus infection in humans usually lasts no more than 6 days throughout. The earliest days after being infected, usually 1-3 months when the onset of the disease, the patient will appear low fever, malaise, headache, nausea, general malaise and other flu-like symptoms, followed by fear and restlessness, irritability and insomnia, sensitivity to sound, light, wind and other stimuli and have a sense of throat tightness, in the healing wound and its innervated area can be itchy, pain, numbness and ants and other strange sensations, lasting 2-4 days and then into the excitation phase. The manifestations are abnormal excitement, extreme fear, fever, fear of wind, fear of water, fear of light, fear of sound, pharyngeal muscle spasms, excessive sweating, drooling, severe seizures can occur in the whole body muscle paroxysmal convulsions, pharyngeal muscle spasms resulting in difficulty in breathing. Mental clarity is mostly clear, and a few patients may have psychosis, which lasts for about 1 to 3 days and then enters the paralytic phase. The patient muscle spasm stops, into the whole body flaccid paralysis, the patient from the quiet into a coma, and finally died due to respiratory and circulatory failure. There are also about one-third of the people infected with rabies virus manifested as paralytic, because mainly the lower center of the brain cristae damaged, the patient does not have a typical manic manifestations, with high fever, headache, vomiting, bite pain at the beginning of the disease, and gradually appeared limb flaccid paralysis, ataxia, impaired activity, sensory function is normal, accompanied by fever, pectoral edema, incontinence, etc., and then enter a coma state gradually die. Clinically, there is a history of being bitten or scratched by rabid dogs or diseased animals, typical symptoms such as fear of water, fear of wind, pharyngeal spasm, or fear of light, fear of sound, excessive sweating, salivation and numbness at the bite wound, sensory abnormalities, etc., combined with the total number of leukocytes in the blood test is mildly to moderately increased (12.0-30.0 × 109/L, neutrophils accounted for more than 80%) can be made a clinical diagnosis. So, can you detect rabies in the early stages of the disease? The rabies virus testing methods that we often refer to include direct detection of the nucleic acid test of the virus, virus isolation, antigen detection, and detection of rabies antibodies produced by the body in response to the rabies virus. Because the rabies virus has a strong affinity for nerves, it enters the body from a break in the skin or mucous membrane and then invades the nerve tissue, spreading retrogradely through the nerve fibers to the center, and generally does not enter the bloodstream, so the rabies virus is generally undetectable in the bloodstream. It is not easy to detect rabies antibody before the 8th day of the disease, and the patient died soon after the disease, so it is not significant. The usual test is the rabies virus antigen in the patient’s saliva, cerebral crest fluid or autopsy brain tissue specimens, viral nucleic acid, cell culture methods to isolate the rabies virus. And the above test is basically in the rabies patient after the onset of disease or death may be detected, it is difficult to early detection. However, the above tests have some early predictive value for rabies virus-carrying animals that have been injured. Is there any simple way to predict the risk of rabies? If you are still unable to tell whether you will be infected with rabies virus, there is another way, that is to isolate the animal that bites and scratches you. If the animal is unharmed within 10 days, it means that there is basically no possibility that the animal will be infected with rabies virus and will not be infected with human beings. If within 10 days the animal appears to be lethargic, xenophagia, restlessness, a lot of salivation, muscle spasms, and later gradually comatose and die of respiratory failure, then we have to be highly vigilant that the diseased animal has infected people with the rabies virus. In this case, be sure to inject rabies vaccine on time, if necessary, strengthen the rabies immune globulin. In short, most of us on the animal bite and scratch whether the rabies will suffer some misunderstanding, either excessive tension or lack of knowledge, can not be scientific and rational treatment, after the above analysis and summary, I hope to give friends some help.