EVEN as another stray dog in Kuching tested positive for rabies yesterday, animal activists are up in arms over the statewide zero-stray campaign to curb the disease.

Concerned over the culling of strays, some online users had threated the safety of Veterinary Services Department personnel over the campaign launched on Wednesday. The department lodged a police report yesterday.

One posting allegedly called for the killing of the personnel involved in the campaign.

State Criminal Investigation Department chief Dev Kumar said police had opened a criminal intimidation investigation as the postings threatened personal safety and encouraged the use of force.

Kumar said one Facebook user suggested mounting road blocks to intercept vehicles transporting the strays.

State Veterinary Services Department surveillance statistics showed that in the Batu Kawa, Matang and Bau areas on the outskirts of Kuching – where seven of the eight positive cases were recorded – there are over 3,000 “wild dogs” roaming in the vicinity.

The latest positive case, which brings the number of positive cases detected since December 28 to eight, was of a dog in the Genesis light industrial park in Jalan Batu Kawa-Matang in Kuching, which has been declared a rabies infected area.

The state disaster management centre at Wisma Bapa Malaysia said the sample was taken from a “dog bite” but did not give further details.

Today the Veterinary Services Department will conduct yet another mass vaccination of pets in the residential areas of Taman Heng Guan in Matang and Jalan Stephen Yong.

Authorities were lulled into believing that the worst of the outbreak was over when no new cases were reported since the end of July.

Deputy Chief Minister Douglas Uggah Embas, who chairs the state disaster management committee, had said in November that the outbreak was “under control”.

However, on December 28, two cases of rabid “wild dogs” were detected in the Matang area of Kuching.

The next day, the Veterinary Services Department announced there were five more new cases – four in Kuching and one in Julau in central Sarawak.

The positive case in Julau caught authorities by surprise as it was outside the 10km buffer zone of the nearest rabies declared area in Sibu.

In keeping up with the standard operating procedure (SOP), Uggah declared all the area within a 10km radius, centred around SMK Julau No. 1, rabies infected area.

That brings the number of rabies infected areas since the outbreak on July 1 last year to 27.

Most of the infected areas are in the district of Serian – the source of the outbreak.

Five people, four of them children including two siblings bitten by an uncle’s infected puppies, have succumbed to the virus.

Prior to this outbreak, the last known death from rabies in Malaysia was in 1998. – January 6, 2018.