Mask mandate imposed in Kerala after 23-year-old dies of Nipah virus

Health and revenue officials are preparing a route map and contact list for the deceased to ensure all Nipah protocols are followed. The 23-year-old student from Bengaluru, originally from Chembaram near Naduvath in Wandoor, passed away at a private hospital in Perinthalmanna last Monday.

Kozhikode: Following the death of a 23-year-old from Malappuram due to Nipah virus infection, authorities have made compulsory the use of masks in the district from Monday till further notice.

Health and revenue officials are now preparing the route map for the deceased and also the contact list to ensure that all the basic protocols of Nipah are followed.

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The deceased, a 23-year-old student at Bengaluru, was a native of Chembaram near Naduvath in Wandoor. He died at a private hospital at Perinthalmanna last Monday.

The treating doctors, after feeling suspicious if it was on account of the Nipah virus, first got a positive report of the test conducted in Kozhikode Medical College.

On Sunday, it was Health Minister Veena George who confirmed that the Pune virology lab report also confirmed that it was Nipah positive.

The district authorities have clamped strict protocols in and around the Thiruvali panchayat including four wards and one ward from the neighbouring Mampad panchayat.

The local theatre and educational institutions in these five wards have been asked to close down and not to open till further orders come.

Notifications have also gone that there should be no public assembly of people and to ensure that if there are any events, it should ensure that all the Nipah protocols are followed.

Incidentally, the deceased youth had come from Bengaluru recently with a leg injury and later turned feverish and visited two local medical clinics. When there was no respite, he was admitted to the hospital at Perinthalmanna, where he passed away.

The Nipah virus also claimed the life of a 14-year-old boy from Kerala‘s Malappuram district this year on July 21, 2024, and then too, the authorities had enforced a clampdown.

In 2018,18 people died from the outbreak of the Nipah virus. It was the first time the deadly disease was detected in South India.

Fruit bats have been found to spread this deadly virus to other animals and human beings.