The Union Health Ministry has confirmed that the two people who recently died in Kerala's Kozhikode due to “unnatural fever” were infected by the Nipah virus. The state Health department, having suspected Nipah infection, had sent the samples to the ICMR-National Institute of Virology, Pune, which reportedly confirmed the presence of the virus on the evening of Tuesday, September 12.
Addressing a press meet on Tuesday morning, Health Minister Veena George said that family members of the 49-year-old deceased man have been admitted at the hospital with fever and are under treatment. This includes the man’s nine-year-old son, a ten-month-old child, and an elderly relative. The nine-year-old is in a critical condition under ventilator support, but his vitals have been stable, the minister said. She added that both the deceased had come in contact with each other at the hospital.
It was in 2018 that the first Nipah outbreak was reported in Kerala. As many as 18 cases of Nipah were confirmed till June 1, 2018 and 17 deaths were reported. There were no deaths during the second outbreak in 2019. Three years after the first outbreak, another case of the Nipah virus was reported from the state when a 12-year-old boy succumbed to the infection in Kozhikode district in September 2021.
The Nipah virus is an RNA virus that was first detected in Malaysia in 1998. Fruit bats are natural hosts of this virus, and pigs are intermediate hosts. According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Nipah Fact Sheet, the virus can be transmitted to humans from animals (bats, pigs), and can also be transmitted directly from human-to-human. It appeared in Bangladesh in 2001, and in the same year, a Nipah virus outbreak happened in Siliguri in West Bengal in India. “Human infections range from asymptomatic infection, acute respiratory infection (mild or severe) and fatal encephalitis,” states the WHO fact sheet. There are no specific drugs or vaccines for NiV infection. Intensive supportive care is the recommended treatment.