A 25-year-old nurse in West Bengal’s Barasat, who was infected with the Nipah virus and later tested negative, died on Thursday. Health officials said she died of cardiac arrest, and her death was not caused by Nipah infection.
According to health officials, she was admitted in the Critical Care Unit (CCU) for over a month and developed a secondary infection in her lungs. She was a resident of Katwa in Purba Bardhaman district.
“Her latest laboratory reports returned negative for Nipah, confirming that the cause of her death was cardiac arrest,” said Principal Secretary (Health) Narayan Swaroop Nigam.
Two confirmed cases of Nipah infection were reported from West Bengal since December, according to reports from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). The other one, a 22-year-old male nurse, who is also admitted in the same hospital in Barasat, has tested negative for the Nipah virus.
The two fell ill after they returned from a trip to Purba Bardhaman district in the last week of December. They worked at a private hospital in Barasat, where they were later admitted and tested positive for the Nipah virus.
To ensure safety, contact tracing was conducted for those who had come into contact with the two nurses. All identified individuals were tested. However, their results came back negative. A National Joint Outbreak Response team was sent to West Bengal to help the state in preventing the spread of the infection. A total of 196 contacts linked to the confirmed cases were identified, traced, monitored, and tested. All traced contacts have been found asymptomatic and have tested negative for Nipah virus disease,” the ministry had said in an earlier statement.
While it may initially seem like a common viral fever, the mortality rate for Nipah is between 50 per cent and 60 per cent. The recovery is linked to the patient’s immune system and early detection.
Nipah is a viral infection that mainly affects animals such as bats, pigs, dogs, and horses, but can jump to humans who come in contact with infected animals and cause serious illness. It can be transmitted through food items such as fruit or date palm sap that has been contaminated with bodily fluids of an infected animal, usually bats.
Nipah usually presents as fever and swelling of the brain and can be highly fatal.