WHO sees low risk of Nipah virus spreading beyond India, no need for travel restrictions
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Small outbreaks are not unusual and virologists say the risk to the general population remains low.
PHOTO: REUTERS
GENEVA – A World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Jan 30 that the risk of the Nipah virus spreading is low, and that none of the over 190 contacts of the two people infected in India had tested positive or developed symptoms of the disease.
Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are among the Asian locations that tightened airport screening this week
“The risk on a national, regional and global level is considered low,” Ms Anais Legand, an official with WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said at a Geneva press briefing, adding that neither person travelled while symptomatic.
The infected patients are hospitalised and alive, with one showing signs of improvement, she said.
Ms Legand said the WHO was waiting for India to release the virus sequence to assess any possible mutation but added that there was “no specific evidence that would make us worry for the time being”.
But it did not rule out further exposure to the virus, which circulates in bat populations in parts of India and neighbouring Bangladesh.
The two health workers infected in India’s eastern state of West Bengal late in December are being treated in hospital, the local authorities have said.
Carried by fruit bats and animals such as pigs, the virus can cause fever and brain inflammation. It has a fatality rate ranging from 40 per cent to 75 per cent, with no cure, though vaccines in development are still being tested.
The virus spreads to humans from infected bats or from fruit they contaminate, but person-to-person transmission is not easy, as it typically requires prolonged contact with infected individuals.
Small outbreaks are not unusual, and virologists say the risk to the general population remains low.
The source of infection was not yet fully understood, said the WHO. It classifies Nipah as a priority pathogen because of a lack of licensed vaccines or treatments, a high fatality rate and a fear that it could mutate into a more transmissible variant.
Nipah not new to India
India regularly reports sporadic Nipah infections, particularly in its southern state of Kerala, regarded as one of the world’s highest-risk regions for the virus, linked to dozens of deaths since it first emerged there in 2018.
The outbreak is the seventh documented in India and the third in West Bengal, where outbreaks in 2001 and 2007 occurred in districts bordering Bangladesh, which reports outbreaks almost annually, the WHO said. REUTERS
