A Team of doctors and experts sent by the Union Health Ministry to Kerala is examining whether the Nipah case confirmed in the state this month was caused by an infected guava that the patient had consumed.
“The patient informed us that he ate guava two weeks before he was admitted to hospital (on June 3). Fruit bats are the carriers of the Nipah virus and their saliva transmits the infection. We have informed authorities about the development and requested them to initiate surveillance,” Dr Ashutosh Biswas, Department of Internal Medicine, AIIMS-Delhi, told The Indian Express.
Studies conducted after the previous Nipah outbreak in the state, which claimed 17 lives last year, had concluded that the virus was first transmitted from fruit bats.