Nipah virus: Containment steps on in Kerala’s Kozhikode after man tests positive for disease

The Kozhikode district administration has begun containment steps in the wake of a 43-year-old man from Ramanattukara testing positive for Nipah infection on Thursday.

Addressing the media in Kozhikode, District Collector M.S. Madhavikutty said that the patient was undergoing treatment at the intensive care unit of the Government Medical College Hospital, Kozhikode, and was on ventilator support.

An isolation ward had been set up earlier there. Ms. Madhavikutty said that there were 77 persons on the contact list of the patient. Of these, 58 were health-care workers, 14 family members, and the rest were his friends or colleagues. None of them had reported any symptoms of the infections so far, she said.

On the contact list, 62 were in low-risk category, 13 were in high-risk category, and two persons were in the highest-risk category. Those in the high risk and highest-risk categories, 15 in total, had been quarantined. A route map of the infected person was being prepared, she said. Ms. Madhavikutty said that the current situation did not warrant declaration of containment zones in the district.

Meanwhile, surveillance and containment steps had been taken in Ramanattukara municipality. A meeting of the rapid response team was convened. Arrangements had been made to provide personal protection equipment, gloves, and face masks. Medicines had also been kept ready. A helpline had been set up at the District Medical Officer’s office and the numbers are 0495-2373 901, 90720 07767.

Ms. Madhavikutty said that the Health department would work in coordination with the departments of Animal Husbandry and Forest and Wildlife as part of the ‘One Health’ approach. “The Forest department has been asked to find out if there had been any mass deaths of bats in roosting sites. The Animal Husbandry department has been asked to see if infections had been reported in animals,” she added.

According to sources, the infected person, a businessman, had high fever and other symptoms of encephalitis. It is learnt that he had taken a godown on rent for business purposes. He is reported to have cleaned the building in May. Health department officials suspect that he may have come into contact with the excreta of bats during the clean-up process. Another suspicion is that he could have eaten fruits from a sapota tree on his residential premises.

Following this, he has had high bouts of fever. Though he had sought treatment in a nearby private hospital initially, his condition did not improve significantly. He was later admitted to a private hospital in Kozhikode city earlier this week. His body fluid samples were sent for lab tests after the doctors suspected Nipah infection. The patient was admitted to the isolation ward at the Kozhikode MCH on Wednesday night (June 10, 2026). The samples were sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune after initial tests at the medical college lab turned positive for the infection.

This is the fourth time the deadly zoonotic disease is being reported from the district. The first ever Nipah outbreak in Kerala was in Kozhikode in 2018. The district had a spillover case in 2021 and another outbreak in 2023. The infection has a high mortality rate, and fruit bats of the Pteropus species, also called flying foxes, are the primary natural reservoirs for the virus. Spillovers are single instances of the infection while outbreaks include human-to-human transmissions. The Health department had earlier issued an alert between April and September as most of the case in previous had been reported during the period.