20:54 | 25/01/2026
The state of West Bengal, in eastern India, is on high alert after the confirmation of an outbreak of the Nipah virus. The epicenter of the emergency is the Narayana Multispecialty hospital, where a chain of infections was detected that affects a doctor, a nurse and other health workers.
The situation is critical: one of the nurses remains in a coma with severe respiratory symptoms.
The preliminary investigation indicates that the virus entered the healthcare center through a patient who died before receiving an accurate diagnosis, which delayed containment measures. The outbreak would have begun to develop days before the beginning of 2026, but the severity of the symptoms in health personnel ended up confirming the presence of Nipah.
As an emergency measure, the strict isolation of 20 close contacts was ordered and mass testing began on another 180 people linked to the hospital. The authorities’ fear lies in the ease with which the virus can spread in closed environments once person-to-person transmission occurs.__IP__
What is the Nipah virus and why is it scaring the world?
Identified by the WHO as one of the diseases with the greatest potential to generate a pandemic, Nipah is a zoonotic virus whose main source is fruit bats.
Humans usually become infected by consuming fruits contaminated by the saliva of these animals or by contact with infected pigs.
What makes Nipah an extreme challenge for modern medicine is its lethality (which can reach 75% of cases) and the lack of approved treatments or vaccines.
In Calcutta, the Ministry of Health has limited visits to hospitals and keeps the entire health “front line” under surveillance, while international organizations closely monitor that the outbreak does not spread to other densely populated regions of the country. (NA)
