2023-09-19 07:01:00
The ghost of covid-19, whose impact on daily life is today a bad memory, reappears in press headlines and alerts from health authorities around the world, but now with the Nipah virus in India.
It is almost inevitable that we will remember those months in which the world stopped, since this weekend the closure of public schools and the prohibition of meetings in the southern part of the country were ordered.
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According to what the epidemiologist and public health doctor, Luis Jorge Hernández, told this newspaper, the Nipah virus currently “is very localized in that part of Asia, which does not mean that there is minimal risk of it spreading here, but so far it has affected very poor villages in India.”
Bats and pigs, apparently, are the species in which the virus developed back in 1998 and 1999 in Malaysia and Singapore. According to the World Organization for Animal Health (WHO), it is a zoonotic disease – that is, it can be transmitted between animals and humans – and is called Nipah because it was the place in Malaysia where it originated.
Apparently, its origin occurred in the pig farms of Malaysia, where there were a variety of fruit trees that, in the end, attracted bats. This situation exposed the pigs – which were raised for human consumption – to the secretions and excretions of flying mammals.
In fact, in Bangladesh outbreak reports suggest that transmission occurred from bats through ingestion of raw palm tree sap contaminated with their excrement (for those in the know: what happened in the 2011 film “Contagion”). .
Epidemiologist Hernández warns that “it is a virus of concern,” given that “its fatality rate is estimated to vary between 40% and 75% of cases.” Although he adds that this rate may vary depending on the outbreak and “the capabilities for epidemiological surveillance and clinical management.”
Its symptoms range from fever, headache, vomiting, cough, dizziness, sore throat, drowsiness, disorientation and mental confusion. Infected people present inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) and respiratory tract.
Nipah does not have a vaccine (Australia and France are investigating the development of one), there is only treatment for the symptoms and the World Health Organization has it on its list of 10 priority pathogens due to the risk they represent due to their pandemic potential.
In fact, medical researcher Camilo Prieto points out that these epidemic outbreaks are due to the fact that phenomena such as wildlife trafficking and deforestation are favoring the interspecies jump of viruses from animals to humans.
Despite the suggestive fear that Nipah generates, the truth is that there is no international alert for the virus and that “historically, Nipah outbreaks have always been able to be contained in the country of origin,” as stated by epidemiologist Zulma Cucunubá.
Previous Nipah outbreaks in Asia
The first outbreak in 1998 left 100 dead in Malaysia and a million pigs slaughtered to contain the virus. It also spread in Singapore with 11 cases and one death among slaughterhouse workers who were in contact with imported pigs.
According to epidemiologist Carlos Trillos, the current outbreak “is a situation that, although it is confined to a specific region, could show a growth in the number of cases and affect other places,” but “there is no situation that should generate alarm in the population”.
Likewise, he indicated that “transmission occurs through contact with body fluids of infected animals or sick people.”
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