Currently, the Nipah virus is causing an outbreak in the state of Kerala, India, causing the South Asian country to step up efforts to trace and prevent the pathogen. Nipah is a virus found in fruit bats and can be transmitted to humans, as well as from person to person.
Sputnik reported that, although the average human-to-human transmission rate of Nipah virus is currently not too high, infectious diseases professor Stephen Luby from Stanford University (USA) warned about the potential risk of the pathogen in future.
There will be occasional cases of super-spreaders where one person carries the Nipah virus to many people, but essentially the virus has an average infection rate "less than one person per case," Luby said. .
"Even so, each time a person is infected with Nipah, the virus has a chance to enter a new environment and find a way to adapt to the human body. This could spark the emergence of a strain of the virus. The new Nipah has a higher capacity for human-to-human transmission and can cause a pandemic," Luby warned.
Under Health Organization World WHO, the mortality rate of Nipah virus infection cases is from 40-75%, depending on the characteristics of the epidemic outbreak.
With such a high mortality rate, Nipah could become one of the world’s worst pandemics if it spreads rapidly, Mr. Luby said. He stressed the importance of continuing to "invest in strategies to reduce the risk of major outbreaks and develop responses to high-risk strains of the virus".
Although there is currently no vaccine for the Nipah virus, Luby said there are a number of "potential" vaccine candidates that have been shown to be "highly effective in animals".
Meanwhile, Dr. K. Puthiyaveettil Aravindan, former professor of pathology at Government Medical College (India), has expressed concern about the risk of future spread of Nipah, stressing that "Kerala may not be the only hot spot."
"There is a possibility that the health system in other states in India may not have been able to trace Nipah," Aravindan said.
This expert also warned that Nipah has a structural change, making it more contagious in humans and could become a "new global threat like Covid-19" due to many factors. .
Nipah virus was first detected in Malaysia in 1990. India recorded its first Nipah infections in Siliguri, West Bengal in 2001 and at least 45 people died from the virus. The state of Kerala also recorded a case of Nipah virus in 2018.
Symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and encephalitis. The incubation period of Nipah normally ranges from 4 days to 14 days, but so far there have been cases where the longest incubation period is 45 days.
