18/12 CR Challenger

The city's center for disease control reports that the rabies epidemic is more serious now than it was two years ago: two 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.


Which one of the following if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy between the two reports?

(A) The number of cases of rabies in wild animals other than raccoons has increased in the past 12 months.
(B) A significant proportion of the raccoon population succumbed to rabies in the year before last.
(C) The symptoms of distemper another disease to which raccoons are susceptible are usually identical to those of rabies.
(D) Since the outbreak of the epidemic, raccoons, which are normally nocturnal have increasingly been seen during daylight hours
(E) The number of confirmed cases of rabid raccoons in neighboring cities has also decreased over the past year.
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