A 14-Year-Old boy has died from a brain-swelling virus spread by bats that has been dubbed the ‘next pandemic threat’. Sixty more people in Kerala, India, are classed as “high risk” after potentially coming into contact with the Nipah virus.
The schoolboy boy went into cardiac arrest in the southern Indian state after contracting the bug, which can cause a lethal, brain-swelling fever.
Nipah is a zoonotic virus, which means it can be transmitted from animals – typically bats and pigs – to humans via direct contact with bodily fluids like blood or saliva.
People can also pick the disease up by eating contaminated foods or through close contact with people who already have it, however, these are rarer forms of transmission.
Listed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a “priority pathogen” with pandemic potential, it can rapidly attack the respiratory and central nervous systems.
The virus is predominantly seen in Bangladesh, where outbreaks occur almost every year.
There have never been any reported cases in the UK.
In a statement on Saturday, Kerala health minister Veena George said the government had issued orders to identify and isolate affected people.
Dr Anoop Kumar, director of critical care medicine at Aster MIMS Hospital in Calicut, said one positive case of Nipah had been diagnosed in a schoolboy and people in close contact with him were being watched.
“There is a minimum chance of an outbreak of Nipah virus at this stage,” he said, adding that the situation would be monitored for the next seven to 10 days.
There are 214 people on the contact list of the boy, the statement said.
