India’s southern state of Kerala shut some schools, offices, and public transport on Wednesday in a race to stop the spread of the rare and deadly Nipah virus. The state health department has ordered seven villages in Kozhikode district to be declared containment zones, imposing strict isolation rules and restricting travel.
The virus, which causes brain-damaging fevers, has killed two people in this outbreak. A state health official said that an adult and a child are still infected in the hospital, and more than 130 people have been tested for the virus, spread via contact with the bodily fluids of infected bats, pigs, or people.
It still needs to be determined what triggered this latest outbreak, which comes less than a year after the country suffered its deadliest-ever Nipah virus outbreak in a district near here. After measures were implemented, the outbreak died down, including using a vaccine and strict contact tracing to identify people who came into contact with the infected.
Symptoms of the disease include fever, headache, disorientation, and nausea. In severe cases, the virus can cause encephalitis, which is usually fatal. Health officials are testing local bats, livestock, and food, including mangoes bitten by bats, to find the source of the virus. It’s believed the strain that has killed two people in Kerala is the same as one that caused an outbreak in Bangladesh in 2001 that killed 70 percent of infected pigs and people, according to Stanford University researcher Stephen Luby, who studies zoonotic diseases.
More than a dozen countries have experienced outbreaks of the virus, which is transmitted to humans from bats, and some strains are more lethal than others. Some have a 30 percent mortality rate, while other strains kill more than 70 percent of infected humans.
Some scientists believe that extensive deforestation in tropical areas like Kerala, where urbanization brings humans and wildlife into proximity, creates ideal conditions for the spread of bat-borne viruses. They say rapid habitat loss and the fact that many animals are being raised in enclosed spaces is helping the viruses to jump from pigs or other mammals into people.
The government has sent experts to help the affected region, and a team of virologists from the Indias National Institute of Virology in Pune is due to arrive at Kozhikode Medical College on Monday. State health minister Veena George told reporters that they will set up a mobile lab to test samples from the dead and carry out surveys of the local bat population. The state has also procured monoclonal antibodies from Australia, which will be administered to patients only if needed.
