The city' s center for disease control reports that the rabies epidemic is more serious now than it was two years ago: 2 years ago less than 25 percent of the local raccoon population was infected, whereas today the infection has spread to more than 50 percent of the raccoon population
However, the newspaper reports that whereas two years ago 32 cases of rabid raccoons were confirmed during a 12-month period, in the past 12 months only 18 cases of rabid raccoons were confirmed
A significant proportion of the raccoon population succumbed to rabies in the year before last.