According to official reports, laboratory tests have ruled out bats spreading the Nipah virus that has already taken 12 lives in Kerala’s Kozhikode and Malappuram districts.
According to officials, 21 samples from bats and pigs were sent to the High Security Animal Diseases laboratory at Bhopal but, all of them turned up negative.
Early this week, a team led by Central Animal Husbandry Commissioner, SP Suresh, after examination of animals in the affected areas near Kozhikode, said no incidence of Nipah virus had been identified in animals. It was only humans who were infected
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Samples sent to Bhopal included those taken from bats found in the house of the disease victim, Moosa in the most-affected, Perambara village. His two sons and a relative have also succumbed to the disease.
All the 21 samples were collected from in and nearby Perambara.