Kerala govt working to identify area, source of first Nipah case
Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala, the state government on Saturday began looking for the source and place from where he got infected by seeking details of his mobile tower locations.
Kerala Health Minister Veena George said while the state government was trying to determine where and how the man got infected, the central team was collecting bat samples to ascertain the viral load. She also claimed that the state's efforts to combat the virus outbreak were appreciated by the central team.
The government was also focusing on completing contact tracing in respect of the sixth person who was confirmed, on Friday, to have been infected by the virus, the minister told reporters.
She also said that there were no new positive cases and in a relief for the state, 94 samples — of persons from the high-risk contact list — have come back negative for the virus.
Meanwhile, 21 people at the Kozhikode Medical College and two kids at the Institute of Maternal and Child Health (IMCH) were in isolation, George said.
Everyone, including a nine-year-old boy on a ventilator, who is under treatment for the virus or is in isolation is stable, she added.
The minister said that all those infected are part of the first wave of the infection which has manifested in two clusters, one being the two family members of the man who was the index case and the second being the persons who came into contact with him at the hospital he went for treatment.
The man who has been identified as the index case died on August 30 and it was only much later it was found that he was infected with Nipah. His nine-year-old son and brother-in-law are still undergoing treatment along with two others, one of them a health worker, with whom he came into contact at a
