Mangaluru: Manipal Centre for Virus Research (MCVR) of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, that is closely monitoring the outbreak of the Nipah virus (NiV) in Kerala, has confirmed that the situation is totally under control, with no new cases being reported in the region. Meanwhile, around 2,000 fever cases are under surveillance, to ensure that the afflicted are not infected by NiV.

This was confirmed by virologist Dr G Arunkumar, who heads MCVR, and is stationed in Perambra in Kozhikode district along with his team. Speaking to TOI, he said so far 18 people tested positive for NiV, ever since the emergence of the disease in the state.

In the first case which resulted in death, the afflicted person couldn’t be tested. In total, 16 people have died due to the virus. “Currently, two patients who tested positive for NiV are under hospitalization, apart from which no other cases have been reported in the past few days. All those who died due to NiV were infected at the hospital by the first person who was admitted for treatment there. No NiV positive cases have been reported in Karnataka,” points out Arun.

The virologist expressed happiness over the early detection of the virus, or else it would have led to a serious outbreak. “Early detection as well as alertness of the health department helped in bringing the disease under control at a nascent stage. NiV cases were first reported on May 4 or May 5, but its impact was minimized within 25 days.”

Arun said no NiV positive cases have been reported since the last few days. “We can only declare the area to be free from the virus, 42 days after the last NiV case is reported. So far, MCVR has tested 210 samples.”

Arun said the first person who died due to NiV was infected by a bat. “It is proven across the globe that fruit bats are responsible for the outbreak of NiV. However, the virus is present only in one or two bats among a colony of bats, which numbers thousand or lakh.

The Kerala government had tested a few bats recently, but results came out negative, because the virus is not uniform. As many as a thousand bats need to be tested to ascertain the presence of the virus,” added Arun.