A

9-year-old boy was pronounced dead on Sunday evening after displaying symptoms usually associated with rabies, bringing Bali’s death toll from the deadly epidemic to 52.

Identified as I Komang Sinarjaya, the boy passed away in at Sanglah Hospital in Denpasar.

“The victim displayed clinical symptoms typical of rabies infection,” the hospital’s spokesperson for rabies, Ken Wirasandhi, said on Tuesday.

“However, we have yet to receive the results of a laboratory test to confirm that the boy was indeed infected with rabies.”

Ken added that while rabies has a set of unique symptoms laboratory-based confirmation was required.

“This confirmation test is quite costly, reaching Rp 500,000 per sample,” he said.

Experts and the government are currently deliberating an option of waiving a confirmation test for deceased patients who have displayed the typical rabies symptoms.

Sinarjaya’s relatives said the boy was bitten by a dog around four months ago.

Unfortunately, his family didn’t bring the child to a health facility to receive a rabies vaccine (VAR).

The dog that bit Sinarjaya was later hit and killed by a speeding car.

“A few days before his death, the boy refused to eat anything and had a difficulty breathing,” Sinarjaya’s uncle, Jelantik, said.

Wirasandhi said requests for VAR inoculation at Sanglah were still high, reaching up to 30 patients
a day.

“[The request] were mostly made by individuals who had been bitten by dogs, but there are also several cases involving cats,” he said.

Separately, a senior official at Bali Veterinary Agency, Ni Made Sukerni said the government-sponsored mass vaccination drives
had succeeded in inoculating at
least 70 percent of the island’s dog population.

Seventy percent was considered by many experts a safe threshold for the containment of the epidemic.

“We will continue the vaccination drive since the number of bite cases is still high,” she said.

Karangasem regency has recorded the highest number of fatalities in the epidemic that began late last year, followed by Badung, Tabanan and Denpasar.