Doctors in protective gear examine patients in Kozhikode: manoramaKozhikode/Palakkad: The Nipah virus has so far claimed three lives in Kerala while one person is undergoing treatment and 8 others are under observation in Kozhikode district, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and health minister K K Shylaja said Monday.
The three deaths, which occurred over the past fortnight, were from the same family, including two siblings in their early twenties and their aunt.
The man who is undergoing treatment for 'Nipah' is the father of the two brothers who died.
Five more people have died due to high fever and similar symptoms of the virus here and in neighbouring Malappuram district.
However, it is yet to be confirmed if the deaths were caused by the virus, health department sources said.
Nipah virus (NiV) infection is a newly emerging zoonosis that causes severe disease in both animals and humans.
The natural host of the virus are fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family, Pteropus genus.
A bat was found in the well of their house which has now been closed, the minister said.
Nurses contact Nipah?
Lini, 31, a nurse at the Perambra Taluk Hospital in Kozhikode, died Sunday night. She had tended to one of the patients who was infected with the virus. Her body was not released to her relatives and the cremation was conducted by the health department Sunday night itself in a quarantine bid amid fears that she could have been infected.
Three more nurses from the EMS Memorial Cooperative hospital at Perambra have been reportedly taken to Government Medical College Hospital here. They had attended to the Nipah-virus affected patients in the early stage. However, there is no confirmation that they have contracted the dreaded disease.
Health minister Shylaja and labour minister, T P Ramakrishnan, who hails from Kozhikode, held discussions with officials and assured that the government had taken all necessary steps to prevent the spread of the virus, which has affected the state for the first time.
Central team in Kerala
A high-level team from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has already arrived in Kozhikode district to take stock of the situation.
The team is being headed by Dr Sujeet Singh, director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). The members of the team are Dr S K Jain, chief, department of epidemiology, NCDC; Dr P Raveendran, director, department of EMR; Dr Naveen Gupta, director, department of Zoonosis, a respiratory physician, neuro physician and an expert from animal husbandry department.
The state has been put on high alert and two control rooms have also been opened.
The minister said there was no need to panic as the virus spreads only through direct contact with the infected person.
"We have listed the persons who have got in touch with the patients. They have been isolated as precautionary measure," she said.
The minister said peripheral hospitals in the vicinity of Medical college have been asked to set up isolation wards and if they have patients with symptoms of the virus, they should be directed to the medical college.
NiV was first identified during an outbreak of disease that took place in Kampung Sungai Nipah in Malaysia during 1998. Then, pigs were the intermediate hosts.
However, in subsequent NiV outbreaks, there were no intermediate hosts.
Most of those infected people were workers at pig breeding centres. The virus can also pass on to humans from fruits that have been touched by bats. It could spread from infected people to others. No vaccine have been developed yet.
The disease begins with breathing difficulty, terrible headache and fever and progresses to brain fever. Death rate among infected people is 74.5 per cent.
(With inputs from PTI)
Read more: Latest Kerala news
