How long is the incubation period of rabies? How long is the incubation period?

Domestic and foreign data show that the incubation period of rabies is usually 1-3 months. The incubation period of a few serious bites on the head and face may be as short as 7 days. In very few cases (less than 1% of the total) The incubation period may also be greater than one year.

The longest incubation period of rabies currently recognized by the international mainstream scientific community is 6 years. American scholars reported this case in a professional magazine in 1991. The deceased was a Filipino immigrant and had never left the United States after immigrating to the United States. Since the chance of contracting rabies in the United States is extremely rare, and the results of partial genetic sequence analysis prove that the rabies virus isolated from the brain of the deceased is the same as the strain circulating in the country where the deceased came from, the report provides the most convincing evidence to date. It has been proven that the incubation period of rabies may be as long as 6 years.

Because the number of similar cases is too small and the relevant evidence chain is not very complete, there are still objections to the case report in the relevant academic circles. For example, many French researchers are not convinced about this case, believing that there are still many doubts in the paper, which are difficult to explain theoretically, and very individual cases may not have universal significance. They believe that cases of more than one year are extremely rare. If the bite by a dog or cat has been more than one year, there is usually no need to supplement the rabies vaccine, and the possibility of recurrence is negligible. They laughed off talk of a longer incubation period.

For more than ten years, some domestic research institutions have also been paying attention to domestic rabies cases with long incubation periods, hoping to use the favorable conditions of China’s second-largest number of rabies cases in the world to find reliable cases with laboratory evidence. Breaking the world record of the longest rabies incubation period of 6 years, publishing important academic papers internationally and enhancing China's international status in related research fields. However, no case with definite evidence of an incubation period of more than one year has been found in China for more than ten years.