The Nipah virus has shifted the focus of the WHO to India, where two cases of disease in health professionals in the state of West Bengal were confirmed last January, after which around 750 affected people have been identified.
A third case of the deadly virus has been recorded in neighboring Bangladesh, but there is no direct relationship between the two outbreaks, according to the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The risk of expansion of the virus, under surveillance due to its high fatality rate and the lack of vaccines and specific treatments, still remains low in the two countries, Tedros assured in his appearance.
Nipah virus symptoms
Nipah virus disease “is considered an emerging and serious zoonosis,” which “appears to have a seasonal pattern, from December to May, and a distribution limited to several countries in South and Southeast Asia, mainly Bangladesh and India, with no cases detected outside of those areas,” according to the reports.
The clinical presentation “is variable from asymptomatic or subclinical forms, with a frequency between 1 and 45 percent, to encephalitis and/or severe acute respiratory failure, with a fatality rate that ranges between 40 (Malaysia) and 75 percent (Bangladesh and India), varying depending on the origin of the outbreak, the local capacity for epidemiological surveillance and clinical management.”
Is there a risk of the Nipah virus reaching Spain?
The Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES) has spoken out about these cases in India and assures that “the probability of detecting an indigenous case of the Nipah virus in Spain is remote.”
These minimal options in this regard are calculated “taking into account the prohibition of the import of live pigs and pork products from the affected countries, as well as the absence of reservoir species in our country,” this body of the Ministry of Health explained in a rapid risk assessment report, dated February 11.
Furthermore, the CCAES has recalled that “some imported cases from endemic areas could be recorded, although with a very low probability.” The impact it would have “would be very low, given the high capacity of the surveillance and care system,” he stated, which is why he insisted that “the current risk for the population of Spain is estimated to be very low.”
WHO monitoring of cases already detected
“Some 230 contacts are being monitored, but at the moment there have been no new cases, and the two outbreaks are not related,” he insisted, although he stressed that the three infections occurred in a border area between both countries and with species of fruit that are believed to be natural reserves of the virus.
The case in Bangladesh was reported to the WHO on February 3, and corresponds to a woman in her 40s who was admitted on January 28 and died that same day. The patient had not traveled recently but had consumed raw date palm sap, according to experts one of the possible vehicles of contagion of this virus, from which around 70% of the cases detected in India and Bangladesh have died since the first case detected in 1998.
The WHO noted that Bangladesh reports small outbreaks of the disease in other years, and that they tend to occur between December and April, coinciding with the harvest and consumption of date palm sap.
