Source: Radio New Zealand
Fruit bats are the most common carriers of the nipah virus in India. ANUWAR HAZARIKA / AFP
Explainer – You might not have heard of the Nipah virus, but if you’re travelling to or from parts of Asia, you’ll want to be aware of it.
The deadly virus, which typically comes from contact with fruit bats, has an estimated fatality rate of 40 to 75 percent of those infected. It can cause symptoms including brain swelling and permanent neurological damage.
Health authorities are warning people to be cautious after new cases broke out in India.
The World Health Organisation was notified on 26 January of two cases of Nipah infection at a private hospital in West Bengal.
What is Nipah?
Nipah isn’t new, said New Zealand epidemiologist Michael Baker, but it is quite dangerous.
It’s what’s called a “zoonotic virus,” which can transmit from animals to humans – in this case, primarily fruit bats.
It was first identified in 1998 among pig farmers in Malaysia, WHO said on its information site about the virus. There have been outbreaks in Bangladesh almost every year since, the organisation says.
“This is a virus that has caused known human cases for almost 30 years and on average we’ve seen about 30 cases a year over that time,” Baker told Morning Report on Monday.
“There is reasons why there’s huge concern about this virus – not so much for its pandemic potential but just because it’s such a serious infection with a fatality rate of over 50 percent.”
Most people who get Nipah develop symptoms involving the brain, like headaches and confusion, or in the lungs, including coughing or difficulty breathing. It can also sometimes cause brain swelling or encephalitis.
Long-term neurological conditions have been reported in about 1 in 5 people who have a Nipah virus infection, WHO says.
How contagious is it?
Don’t worry – this isn’t likely to turn into Covid-26.
“It’s a difficult virus to catch and it doesn’t have efficient transmission from people to people,” Baker said. “It isn’t transmitted by respiratory routes so this is not like Covid-19 in terms of its pandemic potential.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade hasn’t raised travel alerts for India, Bangladesh or Malaysia on its SafeTravel website specifically over the Nipah virus, but there are other cautions in place.
Screening measures for Nipah are in place at airports in places including Bali, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Nepal, Reuters has reported.
Epidemiology professor Michael Baker. Supplied / Department of Public Health
WHO says that transmission of the virus to humans can occur “from direct contact with infected animals like bats, pigs or horses, and by consuming fruits or fruit products, such as raw date palm juice, contaminated by infected fruit bats”.
The two recent cases in India were human-to-human transmission, he said.
“They were health care workers and they appear to have been looking after a patient who was infected. There may be other cases in that hospital, we’re obviously waiting to get the full report.”
However, Baker noted there were over 200 people who dealt with the patients and none of them appeared to be infected.
WHO says it “assesses the risk posed by Nipah to be moderate at the sub-national level, and low at the national, the regional and global levels”.
How do you avoid it?
MFAT’s SafeTravel website includes Nipah in its list of infectious diseases, and warns that if you’re travelling to anywhere where outbreaks have occurred, you should:
- Wash your hands regularly with soap and water or hand sanitiser, especially before eating and after contact with animals, their products and their environments.
- Avoid contact with animals, especially bats, pigs, monkeys and stray animals.
- Avoid areas where bats roost and avoid touching anything that could be soiled by bats.
- Avoid eating raw or unprocessed animal products, such as unpasteurised milk.
- Avoid eating fruit or plant-based product that may have been contaminated by animal or their bodily fluids including fresh date palm sap. Clean and peel fruit yourself before eating it.
- Avoid contact with the blood or body fluids of someone with Nipah.
- Eat food that is fully cooked and fruits that can be washed and peeled.
Is a Nipah virus infection hard to treat?
Of the India cases, one person was put on mechanical ventilation and another had severe neurological illness, WHO has said.
There is no vaccine and no specific antibiotic treatment, Baker said.
“The care would be called what is supportive care but it still has this very high mortality risk at the moment.”
Reuters has reported that according to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a group that tracks emerging disease threats and funds the development of medical tools to protect against them, as of December 750 cases of Nipah had been recorded in all, and 415 of the patients died.
A fruit bat flies between trees in Nagaon District, Assam, India, on 1 February 2026. ANUWAR HAZARIKA / AFP
Could it come to New Zealand?
It’s possible cases could come through overseas travel from India or other countries. The incubation period can run from four days to two weeks, Baker said.
Still, it would be difficult for Nipah to really spread here.
“(Even) if they arrived, say in New Zealand and they became ill, they would be cared for very carefully in the health care environment and there’d be a very low risk of transmission to other people.”
There are no fruit bats in New Zealand – just two species of small, insect-eating native bats. Australian bats have only rarely been spotted here.
“It can’t really become established in New Zealand – we don’t have the animal reservoirs, we don’t have the fruit bats, for instance.”
Fruit bats are considered the natural host of the Nipah virus, although it does not appear to cause disease in them, WHO has said.
“Bats seem to have an ecological niche where they’re great incubators of viruses and they live in big colonies, they share their viruses very widely,” Baker said.
Much of the scientific evidence, from the WHO Scientific Advisory Group and others, seems to be that Covid-19 also originated in bats, which tend to be a winged vector for diseases.
“This is why the risk of such emerging diseases is increasing because humans are encroaching more on the habitats of bats.”
Other animals such as pigs can get infected and then infect humans.
Baker said the Nipah outbreak showed the importance of WHO’s work, which has come under scrutiny lately with the US withdrawing from the group and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters questioning whether New Zealand should continue to fund it.
“This is really another reason why we need the World Health Organisation looking at the prevention of these zoonotic infections,” Baker said.
Should we do anything?
“There’s nothing extra New Zealand needs to do at the moment,” Baker said, but medical staff in general should be aware of any data coming in and awareness of travel histories of people coming from any region where Nipah is endemic.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
