Kerala: Central Team Visits House Of Nipah Victim, Collects Samples Of Rambutan Fruits

The sample of Rambutan fruits could help the team to identify the source of infection and ascertain whether the origin of the infection was through a bat.

Chennai: The central government’s health team on Sunday visited the house of a 12-year-old boy who died after getting infected by the Nipah virus, in Kozhikode district in Kerala. The team had also collected samples of Rambutan fruits from the locality. 

According to a report in Hindustan Times, a statement from the government said that the sample of Rambutan fruits could help the team to identify the source of infection and ascertain whether the origin of the infection was through a bat. 

The report said that the team from National Centre for Diseases Control (NCDC) interacted with the family members and others who remained close to the deceased to collect details like types of food the boy ate and animals he had come in contact with. 

Meanwhile, according to a Hindu report, Kerala health minister Veena George said that all deaths in the immediate family and surrounding localities of the deceased would be checked and a team from the Animal Husbandry Department would be inspecting the locality. Restrictions have been imposed for a three-kilometer radius around his house, the minister said and added that the contact tracing would be intensified for another week. 

On Sunday morning, a 12-year-old boy died due to the Nipah virus. Subsequently, Kerala health authorities have identified two more people with the symptoms of Nipah virus infection. 

According to a PTI report, Kerala health minister Veena George said that the two were among the high-risk contacts of the deceased. 

"We have identified 188 contacts till now. The surveillance team has marked 20 of them as high-risk contacts. Two of these high-risk contacts have symptoms and both of them are health workers. One works with a private hospital, while the other is a staff member of Kozhikode Medical College hospital," she told reporters, as per the report. Earlier she chaired a high-level meeting to take control of the situation.

Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu government has stepped up fever surveillance at the inter-state borders following the Nipah virus death in Kerala. Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian told IANS that they had informed the senior health officials of nine districts sharing their border with Kerala to step up the fever surveillance shortly after the information about Nipah virus infection death was received.