Nipah virus: Two new cases take death toll from deadly strain in India to 15 despite authorities insisting it is contained

Two more cases of the deadly Nipah virus have been confirmed in southern India, taking the death toll in the outbreak up to 15 and raising new fears after officials previously said the disease was not spreading.

The new cases considerably expand the list of contacts being monitored by government health agents, who have been scrambled from expert facilities across the country to deal with the Kerala outbreak.

The district medical officer for the city of Kozhikode, where a family came down with the first confirmed cases in outbreak, said on Thursday that 17 people had tested positive for the Nipah virus in total.

All but those first few cases are believed to have spread from human-to-human contact. There is no vaccine or cure for the virus, which causes swelling of the brain and can leave victims in a coma within 24 hours of symptoms starting to show.

The latest victims were identified as P Madhusoodan, 55, a senior clerk at the district court who died in a private hospital, and a 28-year-old man named Akhil who died at the medical college hospital.

Akhil’s death raised particular concerns, the Times of India reported, because he was not included on a comprehensive contact list prepared by the local health department.

He also did not hail from either of two areas in Kerala previously targeted in warnings from the authorities. Officials dismissed reports last week that the disease was spreading, saying that all confirmed cases had been isolated to the districts of Kannur and Kozhikode.

And while the WHO has praised the Indian government’s rapid response to what is the first known outbreak of Nipah in southern India, officials have been unable to avoid at times wide-scale panic.

Briefing local media on Thursday, Kerala’s director of health services Dr R L Saritha said she was unable to provide any information on reports that a soldier had died of suspected Nipah in Kolkata, after travelling to Kerala on leave.

And she said doctors at the medical college hospital had been unable to follow up any of 28-year-old Akhil’s contacts because he was “disoriented” at the time of admission.

She said 1,353 people were on an “expanded” contacts list and “we are closely monitoring the conditions of each person in the list”.

Nipah was first observed in Malaysia in 1998, in the village from which it takes its name. There have been two previous Indian outbreaks, in 2001 and 2007, both in eastern states.

The WHO includes Nipah on its list of the top diseases most likely to result in a global pandemic, alongside the likes of Ebola and Zika.

With almost annual outbreaks leading to dozens of deaths in Bangladesh, and now the high-profile cases in India, the WHO is working with the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minnesota to encourage development of treatments and vaccines. A 15 May update from the centre said its work on Nipah was “on schedule” and would report back in June.