Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Experts: "No rapid testing, good treatments, or vaccines" for Nipah virus


Sat 27 Feb 2021 | 12:48 PM
Rana Atef

Daily Express reported on Saturday that several experts started warning the outbreak of Nipah virus as there are "no rapid testing, good treatments, or vaccines available."

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health member Dr. Emily Gurley asserted that the virus' ability to transmit from human to human should be limited.

She explained that every Nipah infection in a person forms an opportunity for the virus to be more transmissible.

Gurley underscored: "That makes it a disease that we should be worried about, currently, it’s just not very infectious. But, if it became more transmissible, that would be a very worrisome development."

Regarding the possibility of new mutated strains of the virus, she outlined: "All viruses mutate over time, and Nipah is no exception. Some genetic changes to the virus could make it more highly transmissible between people."

Gurley continued: "There could be variants that already exist in bats that would be more transmissible between people, we don’t understand that persity well. However, every Nipah infection in a person is another opportunity for the virus to adapt to us and become more transmissible."

Last month, The Guardian published a report warning the world of the new mysterious and fatal infectious virus.

The executive director of the Dutch Access to Medicine Foundation Jayasree KIyer explained, “an outbreak of the the virus in China, with a fatality rate of up to 75%, is potentially the next big pandemic risk.”

“It virus is another emerging infectious disease that causes great concern,” she highlighted, adding, Nipah could blow any moment. The next pandemic could be a drug-resistant infection.”

The new virus can cause severe respiratory problems and encephalitis. It can cause damages to the organ it infects by at least 40%.

The main carriers of such a virus are fruit bats. Palm trees could be one of the main houses of such bats, that’s why the virus outbreak occurred in Bangladesh and India.