Governor’s Family Gets Rabies Shots Precautionary Steps Being Taken After Bats Found In Olympia Home

Gov. Gary Locke, his wife and their infant daughter are getting rabies shots as a precaution after bats were discovered last week in the governor’s mansion, Locke’s press office said Tuesday.

There are no discernible signs that any of the Lockes were bitten by bats, but Locke and his wife, Mona, heeded the advice of state and Thurston County health officials to get the shots to be on the safe side, said the governor’s press secretary, Mary Lou Flynn.

Rabies is a severe viral disease that affects the central nervous system and nearly always is fatal if allowed to develop to stages where symptoms are visible, state epidemiologist Paul Stehr-Green said.

The Lockes and their month-old daughter, Emily, started the series of vaccinations last weekend - a one-time shot of rabies immunoglobulin and the first of five shots of human diploid cell rabies vaccine. The vaccine shots were administered again Tuesday and will continue for three more weeks.

“Everyone is doing fine,” Flynn said. “There haven’t been any health problems.”

Stehr-Green said the treatment, once painful and difficult, now is “not very painful at all and has very low side effects.” Shots can be administered in the arm, as opposed to the old days when a different treatment was administered with shots to the stomach.

He said the Lockes’ decision to undergo the treatments is prudent given what is known about rabies and the way it can spread.

“We have had two cases of people dying from rabies in Washington in the past two years,” and neither victim showed visible evidence of having been bitten, he said.

The bat saga began more than a week ago when the Lockes trapped a bat in a third-floor room. Last Thursday morning, Locke stumbled from bed to change his daughter’s diaper only to spot a bat circling overhead in the master bedroom.

The governor chased the bat into the ballroom and shut the door.

Exterminators could not find a bat later Thursday.

But Thursday night, Locke again spotted the creature. He opened windows and shooed it outside, he told reporters.