GOD'S OWN VIRUS LAB

The fourth Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala in six years has tossed a few questions in the air.

-  Jeemon Jacob

To be sure, the disease has claimed only two lives till now-the state's redoubtable public health apparatus, going into overdrive with its well-rehearsed control measures, has largely tamped down on its spread. But the very reappearance of Nipah, a fruit bat-borne virus with a very high mortality rate of 40-70 per cent, has spread a different kind of infection: fear. The question on everyone's mind is, what makes the state seemingly uniquely prone to vector-borne and zoonotic diseases? Ever since chikungunya claimed nearly 100 lives in 2006, Kerala has been stalked nearly incessantly by serial killers of the microbic ilkbeing the first port of call in India for Covid was only a fitting side-story.