Nipah worries in state eased further on Thursday with 22 more persons in the contact list of the 12-year-old boy from Chathamangalam, who died of Nipah on Sunday, testing negative for the virus.
With this, 68 close contacts of the boy have tested negative for the infection so far. Health minister Veena George told the media in Thiruvananthapuram that all tests conducted today were held at the lab set up in Kozhikode government medical college hospital.
She said currently there were 274 persons in the contact list of the boy, of which 149 were health workers. Only seven persons in the contact list were symptomatic and they had only mild symptoms like fever and headache.
As many as 47 persons in the list were from other districts. George said that the house-to-house survey in the containment zone, declared in a 3km radius around the boy’s home, has been completed and no instances of unnatural fever or unnatural deaths have been reported; which was a positive development.
“As many as 89 persons had fever and related symptoms but none of them are epidemiologically linked to the boy. However, two mobile labs have been pressed in to facilitate their tests for Covid and Nipah,” she said Meanwhile, a team from National Institute of Virology, Pune along with officials of forest department and animal husbandry department (AHD) surveyed the bat habitats around the two Rambutan trees located near the house of the boy at Pazhoor.
“We identified two bat colonies from where live bat samples would be collected. The exercise is likely to be conducted tomorrow after the equipment needed to trap bats and sample collection –which are being brought by road – arrive,” said an official with AHD. Meanwhile, various samples collected by ADH were sent to National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases laboratory in Bhopal on Thursday.
AHD had collected samples of Rambutan fruits from the vicinity, arecanuts suspected to be bitten by bats, bat droppings and dead bats. Also samples from around 23 goats in the locality were also collected by AHD for testing.
