It causes inflammation of the brain and almost certain death, is transmitted by bats and is transmitted from person to person.
Authorities in the southern Indian state of Kerala are trying to prevent a new spread of the Nipa virus. On September 5, a 12-year-old boy died of a highly contagious disease. Authorities are trying to track his contacts to isolate the contacts. The entire nearby area was seceded, and the population in the neighboring areas was warned.
This is the second outbreak of Nipa virus in Kerala in the last three years. At the same time, the state is severely affected by the coronavirus. Almost 70 percent of the nearly 40,000 newly registered cases of Kovid-19 in India are in Kerala.
Nipa was first discovered in Malaysia
The coronavirus has nothing to do with the Nipa virus, which was first discovered in 1998 in the Malaysian village of Sungai Nipa. At that time, encephalitis was registered in 229 people, as well as severe respiratory infections.
As most of those affected were men working in slaughterhouses, the infection was thought to be animal-related. At the same time, pigs in Malaysia had a far more limited outbreak of a respiratory infection caused by an unknown pathogen. It later became clear that the pathogen in pigs and slaughterhouse workers was the same. As a precaution, more than a million pigs were killed in Malaysia, half of the country’s total population.
Since then, the highly contagious virus has appeared in isolated cases – in 2001 and 2003 in Bangladesh, and most recently in 2018 in Kerala.
How does the virus spread?
Nipa virus is found in bats (flying foxes). They are fruit-eating and feed on nectar and pollen, unlike other bats, which eat insects and drink animal blood. Fruit-eating bats are twice the size of insectivores and orient themselves with their eyes, not with ultrasound.
How the virus spread to pigs, calves, and eventually humans has not yet been fully understood. There are indications that humans and animals can become infected through the saliva or urine of bats.
Humans and animals can infect each other directly by airborne droplets or by touch. Human-to-human transmission is also possible. Eating contaminated fruit – such as that that has been bitten by bats – can also lead to infection.
Cases reported in Kerala in 2018 are likely due to contamination of drinking water: dead fruit bats were found in a well in the house of a family in the village of Changarot with many sick members.
A deadly virus
Nipa virus causes severe brain inflammation or encephalitis. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the incubation period is from five days to two weeks.
The first symptoms are similar to those of the flu: fever, nausea and severe headache. Some patients also develop breathing problems. Later, disorientation, dizziness and confusion appear. Patients may fall into a coma and die within a day or two. The mortality rate at Nipa is 70 percent.
How is Nipa treated?
No vaccines or effective drugs against the Nipa virus have been developed to date, either for animals or humans. Only patients’ symptoms can be relieved with appropriate medication. However, the use of the antiviral drug ribavirin shows good results.
After registration of Nipa infection, patients should be immediately isolated and placed in the intensive care unit to maintain their vital functions. Quarantine is recommended for contact persons to prevent the spread of the dangerous infectious disease.
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