Nipah Virus Kills 12-Year-Old Boy In India; Can This Cause Another Pandemic?

India is now trying to contain a Nipah virus epidemic. The virus, not related to the COVID-19, took away the life of a 12-year-old kid in the southern Indian state of Kerala. The recent incident made the authorities quickly track down the victim's contacts.

The New York Post said the child was taken to the hospital with a high fever a week ago. Healthcare workers submitted the victim's blood samples to the National Institute of Virology. Tests confirmed a Nipah virus as his health worsened, and physicians suspected brain inflammation. On Sunday morning, he passed away.

Authorities have stepped up contact tracing efforts, identifying, quarantining, and testing anybody who may have come into contact with the little victim. According to state health minister Veena Georg, contact tracers identified 188 persons who had direct contact with the child. Twenty of them were designated high-risk main contacts - primarily his family members, all of whom were subjected to severe confinement or hospitalization.

Two healthcare workers who had close contact with the victim had shown symptoms of Nipah infection on Monday. They had submitted their blood samples for testing and are now admitted to the hospital.

Authorities closed the area within a two-mile radius of the boy's house and began screening individuals for symptoms in all of Kerala's neighboring districts. Tamil Nadu, a neighboring state, was also on high alert for any suspected instances of fever.

(Photo: STR/AFP via Getty Images)
Health officials in full protective gear walk inside an isolation ward of Ernakulam Medical College in Kochi in the Indian southwestern state of Kerala on June 6, 2019. - Indian authorities in the southern state of Kerala said Tuesday that a 23-year-old student had been infected by the potentially deadly Nipah virus. Over 300 people who came into contact with the student are under observation.

A Nipah virus epidemic has been detected in Kerala for the second time in three years, and the state is also dealing with a high prevalence of COVID-19 infections. Every day, around 68 percent of India's about 40,000 new cases are reported to the state.

Nipah Virus Explained

Nipah, like the coronavirus, is a zoonotic virus. It could spread from animals to people, as Science Times reported. Humans get infected if they come into direct contact with the animals or eat contaminated food. However, Nipah can be transferred from person to person in some cases.

Fruit bats, also known as flying foxes, naturally spread the Nipah virus. Other animals such as cats, dogs, goats, horses, pigs, and sheep have all been reported to get the virus from them.

An infected person will experience fever, headache, and other respiratory problems like cough and sore throat. The disease could quickly swell the brain cells. That will eventually lead to disorientation, sleepiness, coma, and even death.

Nipah has no known cure or vaccination. Therefore patients are only provided supportive medical treatment.

According to the World Health Organization, Nipah infections can be fatal in up to 75% of cases. On the other hand, the coronavirus is estimated to have a mortality rate of approximately two percent. Meanwhile, several survivors have neurological consequences that might last a long time, such as seizures and personality problems.

Nipah Virus May Cause Another Epidemic

According to USA Today, authorities found the Nipah virus in 1999 during an outbreak in Malaysia. Multiple outbreaks in South and Southeast Asia have happened since then. It is believed to have killed around 260 individuals in all.

Gulf News reported that the source of a 2004 Bangladesh outbreak was humans ingesting date palm sap contaminated by infected fruit bats. CBS News said the Nipah virus claimed the lives of 17 of the 18 persons who were infected in 2018. All of the illnesses were linked back to fruit bats discovered dead in a family's well water.

Nipah is less infectious than coronavirus, but it has a considerably greater fatality rate, a 45-day incubation period, and the capacity to infect a far larger range of animals, all of which make it major concern epidemiologists seeking to anticipate and prevent the next pandemic.

Veasna Duong, the head of virology at the Institut Pasteur research lab in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, claimed the proximity that people and bats encounter at markets and other crowded places across the Asian continent poses a serious risk.

Duong, who spoke to the BBC's Future program, said this type of exposure might lead the virus to evolve, resulting in a pandemic. He added that the Nipah virus might find a host and go outside of Asia in some cases.

In another CBS News report, scientists warned that as temperatures warm and humans destroy more natural habitats for animals like fruit bats in Asia, more zoonotic variations will develop.

WHO said fruits or fruit products infected with saliva or urine from infected bats could be washed thoroughly and peeled before consumption to reduce the danger of international transmission. Fruit that bats have bitten should be discarded, the health agency added.