WHO reports a Nipah virus case in Kerala as India logs its second notification of 2026

The World Health Organization has confirmed a single laboratory-confirmed case of Nipah virus infection in Kozhikode district, Kerala, India. The report was published on 25 June 2026 as Disease Outbreak News 2026-DON609. The patient is an adult male resident of the district and his symptoms began on 30 May 2026. It is India's second Nipah notification of 2026. No secondary cases had been detected at the time of reporting.

Symptom onset was 30 May 2026, hospitalisation followed on 10 June 2026, and laboratory confirmation came on 11 June 2026. The presentation was primarily neurological. No respiratory symptoms were recorded before intubation, and he was on ventilatory support in intensive care at the time WHO published. Local laboratories made the diagnosis by PCR, and the National Institute of Virology in Pune confirmed it by RT-PCR.

Contact tracing identified 104 contacts as of 18 June 2026. Four were classed as very high risk, 14 as high risk and 86 as low risk. Forty-five of the 104 are health and care workers. All of them were followed up twice daily, and no secondary cases were reported. By 18 June, 125 quarantined contacts had received psychosocial support.

Community surveillance went house to house. The survey covered all 320 households and all 1,047 residents of Division 5 of Ramanattukara Municipality, and found no Nipah-compatible symptoms.

A National Centre for Disease Control team and an Indian Council of Medical Research expert team both travelled to Kozhikode on 13 June 2026, following the laboratory confirmation on 11 June. Kerala's State Health Department established a State High-Power Committee for Epidemic Control to study the state's recurrent seasonal Nipah events. The committee is a multi-sectoral body drawing on government and private clinicians, One Health experts and representatives of the Animal Husbandry, Food Safety and AYUSH departments and of local government.

The investigation also ran on the animal side. The Animal Husbandry Department collected bat and other animal specimens within a 5 km radius of the epicentre and sent them to the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases in Bhopal. Those results were pending when WHO published, leaving that part of the investigation open.

Case fatality across Nipah outbreaks in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Singapore ranges from 40 to 75 per cent. The incubation period is usually 3 to 14 days, and rarely extends to as long as 45 days. There is no licensed vaccine against the virus and no specific therapeutic for it. Nipah is a priority pathogen under the WHO R&D Blueprint.

With no vaccine and no specific treatment available, the response to a confirmed case rests on detection, contact tracing and monitoring. That is what the state and federal teams put in place in Kozhikode: 104 contacts under twice-daily follow-up, a door-to-door survey of the surrounding division, psychosocial support for those in quarantine, and animal sampling around the epicentre.

Kerala recorded its first Nipah outbreak in 2018. Recurrences followed in 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025, and again this year. The state recognises April to September as its high-alert period. India's largest recorded Nipah events remain the Siliguri outbreak of 2001, with 66 cases, and the Kerala outbreak of 2018, with 18 cases.

India's first Nipah notification of 2026 concerned two epidemiologically linked cases in West Bengal. WHO reported those in Disease Outbreak News 2026-DON593 on 30 January 2026.

WHO assessed the risk as moderate at sub-national level and low at regional and global level. It recommended no travel or trade restrictions on India.