iStock Around the tenth of January, news of a flu outbreak in China’s Hubei province started making its way to mainstream media. It then spread to other parts of the country, and subsequently, overseas.

Nipah Virus Symptoms: Abdominal Pain, Stiff Neck And Seizures







Autoplay Autoplay 1 of 5 Nipah Virus Signs People are in a state of chaos as the 'deadly' Nipah virus (NiV) is slowly gripping the nation.



On Tuesday, minutes before succumbing to the infection, a 28-year-old nurse Lini had shared an emotional letter with her husband, expressing the pain of not being able to see him one last time. She was exposed to the virus while treating affected patients in the Perambra Taluk Hospital, Kozhikode.



While the moving note broke our hearts, it's time we take this condition seriously and be extremely cautious about it.



Here are the symptoms to watch out for.



Also read: The complete Nipah Virus guide

Asymptomatic Infection NiV doesn't show any symptoms when it first infects you. However, the incubation period is between 4 and 14 days from contracting the disease to the onset of symptoms. However, 45 days of incubation have also been reported in some case. Influenza-Like Symptoms When the symptoms start showing, look out for the commons signs of influenza. The infection can start with fever, sore throat, throat irritation, throbbing headaches, abdominal pain, fainting, nausea, vomiting and pain in muscles (myalgia). Acute Respiratory Infection The next things this virus affects is your breathing. Patients will experience mild to severe acute respiratory infection. Starting with wheezing and breathing difficulty, the symptoms lead to atypical pneumonia and other severe problems. Fatal Encephalitis The next stage is fatal encephalitis. This life-threatening condition is a form of brain fever causing inflammation of tissues. Watch out for mild symptoms like fever, headache, vomiting, stiff neck, exhaustion, and severe signs like high fever, confusion, drowsiness, hallucinations, slower movements, coma (within 24-48 hours), seizures, irritability, sensitivity to light, unconsciousness and neurological problems.



However, people can make full recovery after surviving acute encephalitis, but the experience long-term neurological conditions like seizures and personality changes.



Currently, there is no vaccine or drug available for humans or animals. Hence, it is extremely important to follow the precautionary steps.

A couple of weeks after the Coronavirus outbreak and the disease has become a full-blown pandemic. According to official Chinese statistics, more than 130 people have died from the mysterious virus.Contagious diseases may be diagnosed by men and women in face masks and lab coats, but warning signs of an epidemic can be detected by computer programmers sitting thousands of miles away. Around the tenth of January, news of a flu outbreak in China’s Hubei province started making its way to mainstream media. It then spread to other parts of the country, and subsequently, overseas.But the first to report of an impending biohazard was BlueDot , a Canadian firm that specializes in infectious disease surveillance. They predicted an impending outbreak of coronavirus on December 31 using an artificial intelligence-powered system that combs through animal and plant disease networks, news reports in vernacular websites, government documents, and other online sources to warn its clients against traveling to danger zones like Wuhan, much before foreign governments started issuing travel advisories.They further used global airline ticketing data to correctly predict that the virus would spread to Seoul, Bangkok, Taipei, and Tokyo. Machine learning and natural language processing techniques were also employed to create models that process large amounts of data in real time. This includes airline ticketing data, news reports in 65 languages, animal and plant disease networks.After the system churns out automated results, the findings are analysed by trained epidemiologists who draw inferences and attach a risk factor to each case. A report is drafted and sent to BlueDot’s clients.“We know that governments may not be relied upon to provide information in a timely fashion. We can pick up news of possible outbreaks, little murmurs or forums or blogs of indications of some kind of unusual events going on,” Kamran Khan, founder and CEO of BlueDot told a news magazine.The death toll from the Coronavirus rose to 81 in China, with thousands of new cases registered each day. The government has extended the Lunar New Year holiday by three days to restrict the movement of people across the country, and thereby lower the chances of more people contracting the respiratory disease.However, a lockdown of the affected area could be detrimental to public health, putting at risk the domestic population, even as medical supplies dwindle, causing much anger and resentment.