Nipah, it’s not the name of an illegal alien but at least the most recent severe threat to humanity. Chances are significant that we return to a situation even worse as Covid era restrictions.
Health authorities already warn for a looming code black.
The Covid pandemic was an event with barely more victims as during a ‘normal’ flu outbreak.
It was the time of near empty planes. No need to hire a private jet to escape horrible screaming children in overcrowded aircrafts. What a great time it was.
I was lucky to travel anywhere with special permission from health authorities. That made it possible to move around the globe at a time most people were locked up without any wrongdoing.
Sometimes I arrived at airports being the only passenger showing up at passport control. Many times police officers asked me where I was heading to.
Are we returning to a Covid like era?
In Asia, the Nipah virus is now slowly but surely triggering a similar reality as during the early days of Covid.
Authorities across Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Thailand and Malaysia introduced new restrictions and measures particularly at airports to stop the highly lethal and epidemic‑prone Nipah virus from spreading.
Airport temperature checks and other screening measures are back on stage.
Nipah with a fatality rate between 40 and 75% is more lethal than Covid ever was and classified as a priority pathogen by the World Health Organization. At this moment there is no approved cure or vaccine.
In December, two infections were confirmed in India. That’s pretty close by.
It’s a so called zoonotic illness spreading between animals and humans.
Nepah is not entirely new. The virus was first identified in 1998 during an outbreak among pig farmers in Malaysia and Singapore. Later on it was traced in 2018 in the India Kerala region.
Scientists assume Nipah also circulated in fruit bats for millennia and warn that the current mutated, highly transmissible strain could emerge from these animals.
Despite the scaremongering news, The World Health Organization with a recently, opened office in Nicosia, clarifies that the risk of the deadly virus spreading from India remains low and does not warrant any travel or trade restrictions.
At least for now.