As infections reported this week in India have the world on high alert, China says it has testing kits ready and a potential drug treatment.
As the Nipah virus outbreak in India set the world on high alert, the Chinese communist regime has claimed that no cases have been detected in China. Meanwhile, the country’s health authorities said they have testing kits ready for the virus.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) also said its researchers have found a potential drug for the bat-transmitted virus.
Two cases of Nipah virus, transmitted by bats, have been confirmed in West Bengal, near Kolkata, India’s third-largest city, as announced by local authorities on Jan. 26, which has triggered fears around the world of another pandemic.
Both patients are 25-year-old nurses—a woman and a man—working at the same hospital in Barasat, located in the North 24 Parganas district, which serves as a major suburb to Kolkata. The male patient’s condition has improved, while the female is still in critical condition, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The Nipah virus is a highly pathogenic, zoonotic, single-stranded RNA virus. It has a high mortality rate ranging from 40 percent to 75 percent. It also has an extremely long incubation period, which can last up to 45 days.
The virus spreads from animals to humans mostly through consuming contaminated food, and it’s also transmitted from human to human through person-to-person contact. Fruit bats are the natural hosts of the virus, and it can be transmitted from pigs to humans.
Cases have previously been reported in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, since its discovery in 1998.
Medical experts have feared that the virus could cause another pandemic due to its similarity to COVID-19. WHO lists Nipah as a virus with pandemic potential.
Asian countries have stepped up surveillance in an effort to prevent the deadly virus from spreading.
Pakistan, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam have tightened health screening at airports. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a Level 2 travel advisory for areas in India where the virus has been detected on Jan. 26. China said it has also tightened airport screening for incoming travelers.
Testing Kits Rolled Out
Although the Chinese regime claims that there have been no confirmed cases of Nipah virus in mainland China so far, health authorities said that all provincial Centers for Disease Control and Prevention across the country now have the capacity for laboratory testing of the Nipah virus and have stockpiled emergency testing reagents, according to state media Xinhua.
By Alex Wu
