Nipah virus resurfaces in Kerala with 43-year-old bizman testing positive; 72 people in contact list

NIpah computer virus has resurfaced in Kerala with a 43-year-old adult male from Feroke in Kozhikode dominion testing positive degree for the transmission, state health minister K Muraleedharan said on Thursday. This is the first case of the infection caused by the zoonotic virus in the state this year.Health officials in the state raised an alert after a preliminary PCR test conducted at the Kozhikode Government Medical College Hospital (MCH) late Wednesday indicated the presence of the virus. Fluid samples of the patient, sent for testing at the National Institute for Virology in Pune, also came back positive for the virus on Thursday.“The man is currently on ventilator support at the Kozhikode Government MCH. All possible treatments are being given,” Muraleedharan told reporters after a review meeting with top health officials in Thiruvananthapuram.The minister stressed that the man, a small-scale businessman residing within Ramanattukara municipality limits, had contact with a large number of people in the days he experienced fever and encephalitis symptoms. He visited at least two private hospitals where he underwent MRI and ECHO tests.“The health department has prepared a contact list which has 72 people so far. Among them, 58 are health workers and 14 are family members. There are two people who have been assessed to have the highest risk of infection. Additionally, 13 are high-risk contacts and the rest assessed to have low-risk. High-risk contacts have been asked to immediately enter quarantine. No one currently has symptoms,” Muraleedharan said.Rapid response teams in the municipal wards where the patient resides held a meeting on Thursday to assess the stock of PPE kits, gloves, and masks. Essential medicines have also been stocked for supply to those in quarantine.With recurrent outbreaks in previous years, the health department has an established set of protocols to tackle the Nipah virus. At the grassroots level, health officials will be deployed to trace the source of the infection and confirm if the first positive case is indeed the index case. Fever surveys will also be carried out in residential areas close to the homes of the infected persons, said officials.Nipah is a zoonotic virus which is transmitted from animals to humans and the natural carrier for the virus is the fruit bat (or flying fox). Infected fruit bats can spread the disease to people and other animals, according to the US-based Centre for Disease Control. Symptoms include fever, headache, cough, sore throat, vomiting and disorientation. Deaths may occur in 40-75%of the cases, and the virus has a high mortality rate.The health minister said that the 43-year-old patient had recently rented a godown and cleaned it himself. “There are indications that the godown contained bat droppings and secretions through which the virus has been known to spread in the past,” he said.Since 2018, when the virus first emerged in the state, Kerala has reported 32 cases, including the one on Thursday, and 23 deaths. The year 2018 reported the most number of cases and fatalities — 19 and 17 respectively. There was one case and zero deaths in 2019, one case and one death in 2021, 6 cases and 2 deaths in 2023, two cases and two deaths in 2024 and two cases and one death in 2025.