Public sentiment reflects a mix of concern and skepticism regarding the Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala. While many express apprehension about health risks and the virus's dangerous nature, others argue that the situation is localized and manageable, calling for clear communication from health authorities.

Government of Kerala

Health Departments

All diseases are not epidemics, and Covid19 is not a benchmark for all public health scares as mainstream media is pushing it.

benjacob

It's safe dude. Only area where you should be cautious is kochi since many people come to kochi for various reasons. But if there is a spread to kochi, it would've been spreaded long ago. Since there is no reported cases in Ernakulam, you're good to go.

urban__op

[deleted]

Afaik nipah has been contained, and it’s not spreading now.

Rokingcloud

Nipah is highly localised. It's likely to remain so. Welcome to kerala my friend

Yea its safe Nipah is only reported in Kozhikode district

Saradhi1221

I also planned to visit Kerala on 29th, for 12 days. Will stick to the plan. Kozhikode is not on our list, everything should be fine. Nipah is not that easily spreaded.

leconte_112

vast_unenthusiasm

Akiro17

https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/nirah-virus-schools-colleges-closed-in-kerala-indefinitely-2436615-2023-09-16

Government shutting down schools and colleges as a preventive measure should prevent you from travelling.

buck___buck

Learned about Nipah from a recent episode of “This Podcast Will Kill You” and it’s quite bad. Incubation period ranges from 4 days to 2 months from studied outbreaks, leading to Central nervous system inflammation, loss of brain stem function leading to reflex deterioration. 

A quote from the host: “And people tend to deteriorate very rapidly. Nipah virus… is an incredibly fatal disease and usually within a matter of days. 40%-90% of people in most outbreaks die within a number of days.”

escarii

"Nipah is classified as a priority pathogen by the [World Health Organization](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/nipah-virus)[, opens new tab](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/nipah-virus) (WHO) because of its potential to trigger an epidemic. There is no vaccine to prevent infection and no treatment to cure it."

Cooool

GlarpMulligan

"Nipah virus is a bat-borne, zoonotic virus that causes Nipah virus infection in humans and other animals, a disease with a very high mortality rate." 

Here we go again boys

SpawnOfSanta

No need for the world to panic about Nipah (yet). These localized outbreaks happen with a surprising regularity. 

There was a Nipah outbreak in Kerala in 2023 too. And another in 2021. And four more in the last six or seven years or so.

Edited to correct spelling.

hairijuana

RaiJolt2

As someone who has read / watched Higurashi the name of the virus couldn't be anything less serious

Loriniel

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/explained-what-is-the-chandipura-virus/article68416813.ece We have a another virus waiting to spread this rainy season.

indi_guy

geekwithout

b0sscrab

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A 14-year-old child from Kerala’s Malappuram district succumbed to the Nipah virus on Sunday (July 21). The Union health ministry, in a statement today, said that the National Institute of Virology had confirmed the Nipah virus infection in the boy. He was undergoing treatment at Kozhikode Government Medical College.

The statement also said the Indian Council Of Medical Research (ICMR) had dispatched monoclonal antibodies, a drug, for the management of the disease, but the patient’s illness had reached an advanced stage, and therefore couldn’t be used. 

However, Manorama Online quoted state health minister Veena George as saying that monoclonal antibodies from Australia had arrived even before the ones from ICMR. Those antibodies couldn’t be used. As per protocol, they have to be administered within the first five days of infection. 

Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-produced artificial antibodies that act like antibodies of the immune system. They attach to the virus, and destroy it. They also stimulate the immune system to act. But they can only be administered  when the disease is not advanced so as to prevent its severe form.

Mathrubhumi reported 246 individuals have been listed as contacts of the patient, with 63 classified as high-risk ones. They would be undergoing isolation, as per treatment protocol.

The New Indian Express quoted the state health minister as saying that special fever clinics would be set up in three areas near the panchayat from where the case was confirmed.

Source- The Wire- https://www.instagram.com/p/C9sJgwUsPin/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

searcher_72

ah shit, is this the newest genre of nature striking back at us

I wonder what the reaction would be if it was gujrat instead

Etitw

plato_of_India

latin countries seem to be the only ones talking about it. What’s exceedingly alarming is that their news outlets are already throwing the word “pandemic” around. This whole situation is just very bizarre and I wish we had more information.

Super_Bag_4863

Kerala Nipah outbreak is definitely under control. Out of the 6 infected, 4 has been cured. And they have left hospital today. The rest two peoples death was what alerted the health department and they isolated and tested  people who came in contact with the two deceased. Everyone who got the disease got it from the index patient. There was no secondary wave of infections.

en_es_key

and this is the study:

The first Nipah outbreak in Bangladesh, during April and May 2001, occurred in a place called Chandpur, a village of six hundred souls in the southern lowlands. Thirteen people got sick, nine of them died, blood samples confirmed the presence of Nipah, and then the problem seemed to go away. People die all too frequently in Bangladesh, from one cause or another, and this cluster didn’t provoke any panic or rigorous investigation. From where had the virus come? Unknown. If bats again were the reservoir, what had caused the spillover? Unknown. Was there an amplifier host? Unknown. Pigs, anyway, weren’t implicated.

When considered in retrospect by a team of epidemiologists, several years later, the Chandpur cases seemed to share only two risk factors worth mentioning. Some of the victims had lived with or cared for other victims, suggesting the possibility of person-to-person transmission, which was new. And more than a few of them had had contact with a sick cow. A cow? The epidemiologists’ published report, conscientious, exact, groping for leads, mentioned that animal several times. If the virus thrives in Malaysian pigs, couldn’t it flourish in a Bangladeshi cow? Maybe. The cow’s role remains undetermined.

In January 2003 another outbreak began, up in Naogaon District, about a hundred miles north of Chandpur. Again febrile illnesses, befuddlement, encephalitis, hospitalizations, a high death rate; and no good explanation of how the virus arrived. One suggestive fact was that a herd of pigs had passed through the area, presumably attended by nomadic drovers, and some of the Nipah encephalitis patients had been exposed to them. Aha. Reports didn’t suggest that the pigs were sneezing and wheezing and stumbling and dying, as in Malaysia, but they may have been infected and infectious nonetheless. Disease scientists in Bangladesh were still puzzling over outbreaks one and two when the third began, in January 2004. It struck a couple of villages within Rajbari District, just west of the Padma River (an outlet finger of the Ganges), across from Dhaka. Again the case numbers were small, only a dozen; but ten of the dozen died. One other pattern in the data seemed curious: Most of these victims were children—boys, below the age of fifteen.

Another squad of epidemiologists arrived, including an American named Joel M. Montgomery, on a postgraduate training fellowship with the CDC. They came with their clipboards and questionnaires and phlebotomy tools, as epidemiologists do, hoping to make sense of what had happened. They did a case-control study, meaning that they tried to identify the source of the outbreak, and its spread, by identifying behavioral differences between those who had gotten sick and those who hadn’t. What were the risky activities that made one a candidate for infection?

Of course, young boys in Bangladesh, like young boys anywhere, engage in lots of risky activities, many of which could result in cracked skulls, broken arms, drowning, snakebite, getting arrested, or being hit by a train. But which kinds of risky behavior could give you Nipah? Montgomery and his colleagues ticked through some possibilities: fishing, hunting, touching dead animals, playing cricket, playing soccer, playing hide-and-seek, picking fruit off the ground and eating it. Among that list, as data accumulated, “touching dead animals” looked like it might be important; several of the sickened children, a week earlier, had helped bury some dead chickens and ducks. Evidently the kids had been acting out funeral rites with deceased poultry. Then again, more than a few uninfected village children had also touched the dead animals. The ducks and chickens turned out to be a false lead. See how tricky it is to do epidemiology in a Bangladesh village? None of those innocent childhood pastimes I’ve mentioned, from duck burial to cricket, was significantly more associated with the infected boys (whether recovered or dead) than with their healthy peers. But one was: climbing trees.

Climbing trees? That was puzzling. Although the Montgomery group documented a strong correlation, their results didn’t explain why tree climbing might expose young Bangladeshis to Nipah infection. They could only make a calculated guess: It put the boys closer to bats.

Three months afterward, in April 2004, health officials in Bangladesh learned of still another outbreak. Faridpur District, just adjacent to Rajbari along the Padma River’s right bank, was the latest site. Faridpur and Rajbari, reachable only by slow ferry, are where the urban clamor of greater Dhaka, groping upward in concrete and rebar, gives way to the silty, deltaic lowlands of southern Bangladesh. Rice paddies line the road. Palms and banana trees grow like weeds in a vacant lot. Among thirty-six patients in Faridpur, twenty-seven died. And the pattern of social connectedness among cases suggested another concern, which had also arisen regarding the Chandpur outbreak: that some people had caught the infection from other people. A team of investigators noted that such person-to-person transmission “increases the risk for wider spread of this highly lethal pathogen. In an impoverished, densely populated country such as Bangladesh, a lethal virus could rapidly spread before effective interventions are implemented.” Judicious language, by which they meant: It could go like wildfire in dry grass.

Then came still another Bangladesh outbreak, the fifth within four years, this time in Tangail District, about sixty miles northwest of Dhaka. Twelve cases, eleven deaths, all during January 2005. Now it began to seem that Bangladesh was uniquely, persistently tormented by this killer disease, recurring in the early months of each year. Malaysia had had no further outbreaks. India, just north of the northwestern Bangladesh border, had had one. Elsewhere in the world, Nipah was unknown. Again a team went out from Dhaka and did a case-control study, looking for the cause of the spillover. The team leader was Stephen Luby, an American physician and epidemiologist from the CDC, seconded to Dhaka as a program director within the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (fastidiously initialed as the ICDDR,B but commonly known as the Cholera Hospital), where he worked closely with his Bangladeshi counterpart from the Ministry of Health, Mahmudur Rahman.

Luby’s group, like Montgomery’s earlier, questioned people about potentially risky activities—things done by patients who sickened and died, or sickened and recovered, that might not have been done by neighbors who remained healthy. For the fatalities, they got their answers from surviving relatives or friends. Had the person climbed a tree? Some had, most hadn’t, both among the patients and the healthy controls. Had the person touched a pig? No, nobody in Tangail was in the habit of touching pigs. Touched a fruit bat? No, nobody. Touched a duck? Yes, but so what, lots of people did that. Touched a sick chicken? Eaten a guava? Eaten a banana? Eaten an animal that was ill at the time of slaughter? Eaten a star fruit? Touched someone who was feverish, confused, and who later died?

The questions themselves are like pen strokes on a sketch of Bangladeshi village life. But none of those questions—not even the one about tree climbing, this time—yielded any statistically significant distinction between those who had gotten sick and those who hadn’t. Only one question asked by the Luby team did: Have you drunk any raw date-palm sap recently?

Gulp, um, yeah. Date-palm sap is a seasonal delicacy in the villages of western Bangladesh. It flows in the veins of a certain palm tree, the sugar date palm (Phoenix sylvestris), and if the tree is tapped, sap will drain into a carefully placed clay pot. Like the sap of a maple tree, it’s sugary—even more sugary than maple, evidently, because it needn’t be rendered down with hours of cooking. Some people are ready to pay good takas, scarce cash, for date-palm sap offered fresh and raw. Tappers sell it door-to-door in the nearby villages, or else on the roadside, like a neighbor kid with a lemonade stand. Customers usually bring a glass or a jar of their own. They drink it down on the spot or carry it home to share with the family. The best quality sap is red, sweet, and clear. Natural fermentation sets in quickly, and the price plummets after 10 a.m., when the sap is no longer so fresh. Impurities also lower the value. Impurities, as you’ll see, have another result too.

The investigation at Tangail found that single distinction between the sick and the well: Among those infected, most had drunk raw date-palm sap. Their healthy neighbors mostly hadn’t. It suggested a more intricate story.

numberfortyrain

Bats also sometimes pee in the toddy jugs when they are placed on top of the coconut trees.


Edit watch : https://youtu.be/YyNdOQ-GFCM?si=wT9lfXqGSTjoTnpW

RyanPhilip1234

4th outbreak - no clear spill over event identified . 
With nipah, often the patient with spill over event is diagnosed retrospectively after death . 
For Bangladesh where first bat ( natural host ) to human spill over occurred - sap juice consumption was identified . Malaysia had pigs to aid the spill over . 
For kerala - we really need to find the spill over incident . We have one surviving index case from 2019 and with proper expert and commitment we can surely do more on this aspect. 

Even bigger challenge is reducing human to human transmission . We really don’t want to have a rna virus undergoing sustained human to human transmission - what happens next would be wuhan like situation . The critical thing here is - unlike pre 2019 we are currently having fast , rapid pcr diagnostics all over the state / districts . Make nipah primer into our respiratory infection or sars cov2 multiplex panels like covid , influenza and intensively and consistently test severe acute resp infections . Let’s find more cases - test , isolate , treat : and we can once again show to world how it is done . 
This is my two cents on what’s happening . Reddit is an echo chamber but let this convo not die in here . Keep discussing about this outside too ! That’s the most important thing right now . 
Stay safe

ohff

Palms are not popular in Kuttiady. Mainly Adakka (areca nut) and coconut. In the maruthonkara side there's rubber plantation also I think

kjrconsta47

aswinkumars94

Op seems to be confusing palm trees with areca. Yeah bats do eat/sip the fruit of arecanut. It has been investigated as an origin. But these bats also go for other fruits like banana or jackfruit.

Sumesh_NPC

അടക്ക അല്ലെങ്കിൽ പിന്നെ തേങ്ങ ആണോ?

redit4ak

പനംകരിക്ക്‌?

https://preview.redd.it/or05bhuzbcob1.jpeg?width=251&amp;format=pjpg&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=29f1722b410b75207013f1710c0a0f9810bc27f2

night_wing39

Paakk ano

https://preview.redd.it/mngyi3t39cob1.jpeg?width=305&amp;format=pjpg&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=c8bff3b84e66b732e25a04fb8133bc256f675934

It makes sense as the Kutyadi area is known for Coconut and Areca.

Good info, need more exploration to identify causation. 
There is a huge initiative in the Andaman islands and the north east of India, to promote palm oil plantation.

cajithk

Interesting theory. That doesn't explain Indonesia, though they are among the biggest producers (other being nalayasia) of palm oil, there doesnt seem to be such outbreaks.

DangerousWolf8743

Chidchidi_Billi

കമുക് മരം. പാക് , അടയ്ക്ക എന്ന പേരിൽ അറിയപ്പെടുന്ന കുരു. വേറെ ഏതു കായ് ഫലം പോലെ അല്ലെ ഉള്ളൂ ഇതു. റംബൂട്ടാണ്, മംഗോസ്റ്റിന്ന്, പേരക്ക, ചാമ്പ  ഒക്കെ ഈ റിസ്കിൽ വരില്ലേ?

Thakshu

IdealInner4622

Okay. Please ask for his information source

QuotingThanos

Why there? There are other places with palm trees right?

cosmicbutch2

Kerala is experiencing its eighth Nipah virus outbreak, with confirmed cases and potential exposure of over 670 individuals. Health authorities are working to manage the situation and prevent further spread.

Nipah Virus Outbreak in Kerala

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