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For years, the World Health Organization has considered the Nipah virus to be a “priority pathogen” because it has the potential to cause a worldwide pandemic. Thankfully, up to this point that has not happened, but now an outbreak in India is making headlines all over the globe. Two victims have already died, and there are four others that have tested positive. A five kilometer containment zone has been established around the homes of the two men that died, and schools and businesses in the region are being forced to shut down. Authorities are hoping that such extreme measures will...

Nearly three dozen people have been sickened by a new virus spreading in China — with scientists warning it is too early to tell if it is deadly or spreads among humans. The Langya henipavirus — or LayV — appears to be jumping from animals in parts of China, nearly three years after the coronavirus pandemic started there. It belongs to a family of viruses that “are known to infect humans and cause fatal disease,” a Chinese-led team of international scientists wrote in a peer-reviewed study in the New England Journal of Medicine. That includes the Nipah virus, which spreads...

The Biden administration's apparent unwillingness to conduct a serious official investigation of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 that holds China accountable for its actions and lack of cooperation could result in a pandemic much more lethal that the current one, warns a leading researcher. Dr. Steven Quay, whose research became part of a State Department probe of the origin of COVID-19 under President Trump, told Fox News' Martha MacCallum on Friday that "all of the evidence points toward the lab theory." "There's no evidence that supports a natural origin at this point," he said. "So I think we're done, at this...

Authorities in India's southern Kerala state are racing to contain an outbreak of the Nipah virus. The virus, which is not related to the coronavirus behind the current global pandemic and is far more deadly, killed a 12-year-old boy in Kerala over the weekend, prompting stepped-up efforts to trace his contacts. New infections have been confirmed. The boy was admitted to a hospital a week ago with high fever. As his condition worsened and doctors suspected inflammation of his brain (encephalitis), his blood samples were sent to the National Institute of Virology, where tests confirmed a Nipah infection. He died...

Trees and wildflowers blossom during all four seasons in Kunming, which is known as The City of Eternal Spring because of its year-round mild temperatures. However, it is also home to something much less natural: a laboratory where scientists have been creating monkey embryos with a mutated gene so that, when born, they will age unusually fast. Such experiments are done to study human diseases such as autism, cancer, Alzheimer's and muscular dystrophy.

Peter Ben Emerek of the World Health Organization (WHO) proclaims it “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). According to the WHO, the issue warrants no further study. But evidence is emerging that the Wuhan lab deliberately engineered the virus. The story begins in Canada. This month Canada removed Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, a virologist from Tianjin, China, and her husband, Keding Cheng, from the nation’s Public Health Agency because, as Karen Pauls of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported on February 6, the pair had previously been removed from Canada’s National Microbiology...

A rare, brain-damaging virus that experts consider a possible epidemic threat has broken out in the state of Kerala, India, for the first time, infecting at least 18 people and killing 17 of them, according to the World Health Organization. The Nipah virus naturally resides in fruit bats across South and Southeast Asia, and can spread to humans through contact with the animals’ bodily fluids. There is no vaccine and no cure.

The disease, which kills up to 75% of those infected, starts with flu-like symptoms and causes a brain-swelling condition known as encephalitis. The virus has not yet spread beyond two areas in south India, according to officials, but they have issued a series of warnings to people living in the stricken towns where more than 200 people are being treated in hospitals. Over 25 people are under strict observation and another three are in a critical condition. … There is no vaccine for nipah, which is listed alongside ebola and zika as one of eight priority diseases by the World...

Vienna, Austria--Scientists have made a discovery about the basic biology of the Nipah virus, which suggests that cheap, existing drugs for high blood pressure and malaria may help fight the disease. Nipah regularly strikes in rural Bangladesh and neighboring parts of India. The new insights about the deadly pathogen, announced here on 14 February at the International Meeting on Emerging Infectious Diseases and Surveillance, could lead to the first human drug studies within a year, scientists say. Nipah, which belongs to the Paramyxoviridae family and causes encephalitis, was discovered during an outbreak in 1998 and 1999 in Malaysia and Singapore...

New And Deadly Viruses Passed Through Sweet Food And Domestic Animals ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2008) — Nipah virus is a new and deadly brain and lung disease that emerged from Singapore and Malaysia ten years ago. It is now spreading into rural India and Bangladesh killing up to three-quarters of the people who become infected in some outbreaks, scientists heard April 3, 2008 at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting. "People are catching this disease by drinking date palm juice or probably by eating fruit contaminated by the virus, or through contact with infected animals. We have seen nine...