The Health Department has directed that intensive infection control measures be initiated at a private hospital in Thrissur district where a non-resident Keralite from the UAE and a native of Malappuram district, who had earlier tested positive for Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), has been isolated.
Health officials said on Monday that at least 20 of his contacts too have been quarantined and kept under close observation as the infection is highly contagious.
Case fatality
The virus causing CCHF is primarily transmitted to people from ticks (of the genus Hyalomma) and livestock animals. The virus can cause severe haemorrhagic fever outbreaks and case fatality can go up to 40%, according to the World Health Organization.
CCHF was first reported in India in Gujarat in hospital settings in 2011 and three deaths had been reported. Again in 2013, a non-nosocomial CCHF outbreak was reported in Amreli district.
Sources said the patient works as a butcher in the UAE and that four persons in his workplace, including him, had been hospitalised in the UAE since November 12 after they experienced fever, severe headache and vomiting. On November 16, they tested positive for CCHF.
The patient was administered a 11-day course of the antiviral drug ribavirin and discharged. On November 29, the patient had arrived at the Kochi airport and was travelling to Malappuram when he felt sick again and got admitted to a private hospital at Thrissur.
“Since he had already been administered a course of ribavirin, we do not know if he is currently positive for CCHF. His blood samples have been sent to the Manipal Virus Research Centre and the National Institute of Virology, Pune. We are closely monitoring the situation and all possible infection control measures have been adopted,” a district health official said.
The patient cannot be discharged till the blood tests establish him as CCHF-negative.
The Health Department has already sourced ribavirin and reached it to Thrissur.
CCHF scare in 2011
There was a CCHF scare in Kerala too in 2011, when the infection was first reported in India. Following the death of a doctor and nurse who had treated a patient in the Gujarat hospital, some 23 Malayali nurses working in the same hospital had in panic travelled back to Kerala and they were later tracked and quarantined till the results tested negative.