KOZHIKODE: With 38 persons hospitalised on the suspicion of Nipah infection, which claimed the life of a 12-year-old boy here, the source of the virus remains unknown puzzling the health experts. In a bid to trace the source, which is very important to contain the virus spread, different teams of experts including from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) are working to identify the same as early as possible. The state health department is likely to field more experts for the task.
On the second consecutive day, an NCDC team led by Dr P Raveendran visited Chathamangalam where the virus infection was reported, and collected swab samples of goats at the victim’s house and droppings of bats in the surroundings. Further, samples of rambutan, which was suspected to be eaten by the victim, and domestic animals and wild pigs were also taken. Officials with state animal husbandry department and forest department were also in the field to collect the samples. The samples will be sent to the National Institute of High-Security Animal Diseases, Bhopal, for testing.
Further, health authorities are checking recent deaths of people in the region who had symptoms similar to that of Nipah to ascertain whether the 12-year-old boy had been infected from others or not. For the same, the medical team will be collecting details of people who had died of fever and those who had shown similar symptoms.
As per the preliminary assessment of health officials, fruit bats are suspected to be the carriers of the virus and the boy might have been infected by eating fruits bitten by bats. To reach a conclusion in this regard, test report of samples of fruits and droppings of bats collected from the region is awaited, an official said. However, health authorities have not ruled out chances of virus infection through other sources such as wild and domestic animals.