Clinico‐epidemiological presentations and management of Nipah virus infection during the outbreak in Kozhikode district, Kerala state, India 2023

Abstract India experienced its sixth Nipah virus (NiV) outbreak in September 2023 in the Kozhikode district of Kerala state. The NiV is primarily transmitted by spillover events from infected bats followed by human‐to‐human transmission. The clinical specimens were screened using real‐time RT‐PCR, and positive specimens were further characterized using next‐generation sequencing. We describe here an in‐depth clinical presentation and management of NiV‐confirmed cases and outbreak containment activities. The current outbreak reported a total of six cases with two deaths, with a case fatality ratio of 33.33%. The cases had a mixed presentation of acute respiratory distress syndrome and encephalitis syndrome. Fever was a persistent presentation in all the cases. The Nipah viral RNA was detected in clinical specimens until the post‐onset day of illness (POD) 14, with viral load in the range of 1.7–3.3 × 10 4 viral RNA copies/mL. The genomic analysis showed that the sequences from the current outbreak clustered into the Indian clade similar to the 2018 and 2019 outbreaks. This study highlights the vigilance of the health system to detect and effectively manage the clustering of cases with clinical presentations similar to NiV, which led to early detection and containment activities.