Nipah virus death puts health officials on alert in southern India

Kochi, India — Authorities in southern India’s Kerala state are taking preventive steps after the death of a 14-year-old boy from the Nipah virus and the identification of 60 people in the high-risk category, the state’s health minister said on Sunday.

Parts of Kerala are among those most at risk globally for outbreaks of the virus, a Reuters investigation showed last year. Nipah, which comes from fruit bats and animals such as pigs, can cause a lethal, brain-swelling fever in humans.

Nipah is classified as a priority pathogen by the World Health Organization (WHO) because of its potential to trigger an epidemic. There is no vaccine to prevent infection and no treatment to cure it.

“The infected boy died on Sunday after a cardiac arrest,” Veena George, the state health minister told local TV reporters, speaking in the Malayalam language.

Earlier, in a statement on Saturday, she said as part of Nipah control, the government has issued orders to set up 25 committees to identify and isolate affected people.

Dr. Anoop Kumar, director of critical care medicine at Aster MIMS Hospital in Calicut, said one positive case of Nipah had been diagnosed in a school boy and people who had been in contact with him were being watched.

“There is a minimum chance of an outbreak of Nipah virus at this stage,” he said, adding that the situation would be monitored for the next seven to 10 days.

There are 214 people on the primary contact list of the boy, the statement said. Among them, 60 are in the high-risk category, it said, and isolation wards have been set up at health institutions to treat patients.

Family members of the affected patient were kept at a local hospital for observation, after a case of Nipah virus was confirmed in Malappuram, a town about 350 kilometers (about 220 miles) from Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram, local media reports said. Other people who might be at risk were asked to isolate at home.

The state government said it is working to trace any affected people to contain the spread of the virus. Nipah has been linked to the deaths of dozens of people in Kerala since its first appearance in the state in 2018.

The virus was first identified 25 years ago in Malaysia and has led to outbreaks in Bangladesh, India and Singapore.

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