A 12-year-old boy has died in Nipah India, a rare virus that is far more deadly than COVID-19, and which health officials have long feared could trigger a global pandemic.
The unidentified boy died Sunday at a hospital in Kerala, the southern state that was already battling the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the affected country, officials said.
He had already visited two other hospitals before he died, putting him in contact with hundreds of people, up to eleven with potential symptoms, NDTV reported.
According to the World Health Organization, previous outbreaks of Nipah (NiV) showed a mortality rate of between 40% and 75%, making it much more deadly than coronavirus.
“The virus has been shown to spread from person to person in these outbreaks, raising concerns about the potential of NiV to cause a global pandemic,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.
More than 100 possible contacts of the boy have already been forced to isolate, 48 of whom were monitored at a hospital in Kerala.
Officials will also conduct door-to-door surveillance and identify secondary contacts.
Health officials are urgently testing as many contacts as possible, with samples of the boy’s main contacts (his family and health workers) turning negative.
“That these eight immediate contacts were negative is a great relief,” said State Health Minister Veena George.
The Nipah virus was first discovered in Malaysia and Singapore in 1999, an outbreak of nearly 300 human cases, with more than 100 dead, the CDC noted. More than a million pigs died to help control the outbreak, causing a “substantial economic impact.”
Complicating its detection, key symptoms are similar to those of COVID-19, including fever, cough, sore throat and difficulty breathing, the CDC noted.
Infected people also often suffer from encephalitis or inflammation of the brain and, if they survive, they often suffer from persistent seizures and even personality changes. The contagion can remain dormant in patients, who can get sick and possibly die “months and even years after exposure,” the CDC warned.
There is no vaccine and the only treatment is supportive care to control complications and keep patients comfortable.
Kerala dealt with a previous outbreak of Nipah in 2018, when more than a dozen people died.
This time, the concern is compounded by the fact that the state is already struggling to contain COVID-19.
On Monday, Kerala recorded about 20,000 COVID-19 infections, the vast majority of India’s daily total of 31,222.
Meanwhile, Nipah can be “difficult” to detect “because of the initial nonspecific symptoms of the disease,” although “early detection and diagnosis are critical to increase the chances of survival” and “to prevent transmission to others.” “. said the CDC.
India Today warned its readers: “The nature of Nipah virus infection is such that if the outbreak goes out of control, it could pose a greater threat to public health than the coronavirus pandemic.”