Kerala reports no new Nipah cases, administration keeps vigilance
The contact list of infected persons has been extended to 1,233 names and over 34,000 homes in containment zones were visited by health workers
No fresh cases of Nipah virus was detected in Kerala on Sunday as 42 more samples, including those at high-risk, came back negative. Six cases of the zoonotic virus have been reported in the state; two have died of the infection and the rest are receiving treatment.
Read here: No new Nipah virus cases in Kerala. Govt tells how long vigilance needed
“It’s a relief that 23 of the 42 samples that were tested and came back negative were of high-risk symptomatic persons. Results of a few more samples are awaited. Nineteen teams of the health department are continuing their work in the field today. Most of those on the contact list of the infected persons have been identified,” health minister Veena George said. “We will find the remaining contacts by tracking their mobile networks with the help of police.”
The contact list of infected persons has been extended to 1,233 names and over 34,000 homes in containment zones were visited by health workers. There are close to 100 wards that have been declared containment zones in Kozhikode district across nine gram panchayats (village councils), one municipality and one municipal corporation.
Teams of central health officials will carry out inspections at the epicentre of the 2018 Nipah outbreak and find out if there have been any ecological changes, George said. Officials from National Institute of Virology in Pune and Indian Council of Medical Research in Chennai are also conducting studies in the field.
Additionally, samples of 36 live bats have been collected from areas close to the two epicentres of the viral outbreak and sent for testing to the Pune lab.
Those under treatment in hospitals are stable. Among them, a nine-year-old boy who tested positive for the virus on September 12 and was on ventilator support has shown signs of improvement, the minister said.
“He has been temporarily taken off ventilator support. He is currently on oxygen support. Doctors have said he is improving,” George said. The minister on Saturday had spoken to the boy’s mother, who had tested negative for the virus. His father, who died on August 30, is considered to be the index case in the outbreak.
Vigilance must continue in Kozhikode district, even though no fresh cases have emerged in the past two days, the minister said.
Read here: 42 more samples test negative for Nipah in Kerala
“The incubation period of the virus is 21 days, which means that a person is likely to start showing symptoms within that period of being infected from another person. But we are observing a double incubation period of 42 days, as per medical science. This means we must continue to remain alert and our surveillance mechanisms must be active for 42 days since the last positive case was detected,” George said.
“We are also carrying out genomic sequencing of the virus to get more fact-based results out of this outbreak,” she said.