Infrequent sub-clinical infections reportedly occurred among close contacts of patients during the Nipah outbreak in Kerala, which claimed its first victim exactly a year ago. A sub-clinical infection is the one that may not have any noticeable signs or symptoms.
It was on May 5, 2018, that V. Mohammed Sabith of Sooppikkada, near Perambra, in Kozhikode district succumbed to the infection. It took, however, around two more weeks to know the cause of the death, in the course of which the infection had claimed the lives of Sabith’s brother, father and aunt.
Now, it has been claimed that “the risk for sub-clinical infections was higher among persons with a history of exposure to body fluids of Nipah-afflicted patients than for those with only physical contact”. Three sub-clinical infections were detected in the course of the survey. Two were family members of a laboratory-confirmed patient and the third was a healthcare worker of the Government Medical College, Kozhikode. All three had a history of exposure to body fluids of Nipah patients.
Published in U.S. journal
This finding follows a serosurvey of 155 healthcare workers and 124 household and community members who had close contact with 18 patients who had laboratory-confirmed Nipah infections. Their observations were published in the May issue of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S.. C.P. Gireesh Kumar, a public health microbiologist with the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Epidemiology, Chennai, is the lead author of the paper. “Although 17 of the 18 laboratory-confirmed patients exhibited acute neurologic or respiratory symptoms, one had mild febrile illness,” the report said.
Laboratory-confirmed Nipah in a patient with only mild febrile illness raised a question of whether additional, mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic infections might also occur among close contacts. To address this question, the study was conducted between July 2 and 13, 2018.
V. Jayasree, District Medical Officer, and a co-author of the paper told The Hindu on Saturday that there was “no new information in the report”, which was based on “a study conducted by the ICMR some time ago.”