Written & Edited By : Aditi Mishra
13 September 2023 ( New Delhi ) : Kerala, India’s southernmost state, closed several schools, offices, and public transportation on Wednesday in an effort to halt the spread of the uncommon and deadly Nipah virus, which has killed two people.
An adult and a child were still afflicted in the hospital, and more than 130 people were tested for the virus, which is carried through contact with the bodily fluids of infected bats, pigs, or humans, according to a state health official.
“We are focusing on tracing contacts of infected persons early and isolating anyone with symptoms,” state Health Minister Veena George told reporters, adding that the virus detected in Kerala was the Bangladesh variant, which spreads from human to human with a high mortality rate but has a history of being less infectious.
“Public movement in parts of the state has been restricted to contain the medical crisis,” she explained.
Two individuals have died in the state’s fourth outbreak of the virus since 2018, prompting authorities to create containment zones in at least seven villages in the Kozhikode district. Strict isolation protocols have been implemented, with medical personnel isolated after coming into touch with the ill.
According to a government official who retraced the victim’s movements to track down all the people he could have interacted with and the places he visited before his health began to deteriorate, the first victim was a small landholder growing bananas and areca nuts in the district’s village of Marutonkara.
While other family members and neighbors are being tested, the victim’s daughter and brother-in-law, who are both afflicted, are being quarantined in an isolation unit.
An initial examination has revealed that the second fatality occurred after contact with the first victim in the hospital, but the two deaths were unrelated, the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, added. On Wednesday, three government teams—among them professionals from the National Virology Institute—arrived to carry out additional tests and survey the fruit bat population in the remote communities.
In 1999, a sickness outbreak among pig farmers and other people who had frequent contact with the animals occurred in Malaysia and Singapore. This is when the Nipah virus was first discovered.
Infections are infrequent and have previously occurred in South Asia when individuals drank date-palm sap that was tainted with bat excreta.
In Kerala’s initial Nipah outbreak, 21 of the 23 affected perished, and two more people perished in outbreaks in 2019 and 2021.
Parts of Kerala were among the regions most likely to experience an international outbreak of bat viruses, according to a Reuters research in May. Urbanization and widespread deforestation have increased interactions between people and animals.
