The health minister informed the media that a total of 151 people are currently on the primary contact list. Their information has been gathered, and those who had direct contact have been placed in isolation. The death of a 24-year-old student in Malappuram, Kerala, has raised alarm over the deadly Nipah virus.
Kerala Health Minister Veena George announced on Sunday that tests conducted at the National Institute of Virology in Pune confirmed the presence of the Nipah virus in the deceased. The health minister informed the media that a total of 151 people are currently on the primary contact list. Their information has been gathered, and those who had direct contact have been placed in isolation.
Five individuals in isolation exhibited mild symptoms, and their samples have been sent for testing. Nipah was first detected in Malaysia in 1999, though no further outbreaks have been reported there since. Two years later, the virus was identified in Bangladesh and India.
India's first case of Nipah virus occurred in Siliguri, West Bengal, in 2001. In Kerala, where two cases have been reported this year, previous outbreaks occurred in Kozhikode district in 2018, 2021, and 2023, and in Ernakulam district in 2019. How does it spread? The Nipah outbreak in Kerala is cause for significant concern due to the severity of the disease, which has a fatality rate of up to 75%.
Fruit bats are the natural carriers of the virus, and it can be transmitted to humans through contamination from anim.