RESPIRATORY AND CEREBRAL SYMPTOMS
While Nipah infection sometimes causes no symptoms, most infected individuals develop illness after an incubation period of three to 14 days – sometimes up to 45 days.
The initial symptoms – including fever, chills, sore throat, vomiting – are often nonspecific, but the condition can rapidly deteriorate and become serious.
Severe forms of the disease can cause serious neurological damage – including encephalitis, seizures, or even comas – or acute respiratory failure.
Its case fatality rate is estimated to be between 40 and 75 per cent, depending on the individual case.
Survivors, for their part, generally recover completely. For about one in five, however, neurological after-effects persist, which can sometimes be debilitating.
LOW TRANSMISSIBILITY, HIGH MORALITY
Unlike many respiratory viruses, such as Covid-19, the virus is not easily transmitted from one human to another.
It requires close and prolonged contact with respiratory secretions or bodily fluids from an infected person.
In India, recent cases have thus affected healthcare workers, and those who had been in contact with these patients were placed in quarantine.