Nipah outbreak in India sparks worry in China ahead of Lunar New Year travel season

Public anxiety spreads on social media despite experts saying transmission risk remains low

An outbreak of the deadly Nipah virus in eastern India has triggered anxiety in China as the Lunar New Year travel rush approaches.

Indian authorities last week confirmed at least five Nipah cases in West Bengal and quarantined nearly 100 people at home.

Though public health experts note the risk of widespread transmission remains low, Chinese social media is reporting growing concern about the deadly infection in the country.

This comes right ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays, the busiest travel season in China.

Online discussions about the Nipah outbreak in neighbouring India are surging. “It’s so scary, especially with the Spring Festival coming up. I don’t want to experience another lockdown,” one social media user said, according to the South China Morning Post.

Another asked: “Can’t we temporarily shut the travel channel with India?”

China added Nipah to its monitored infectious disease list after the outbreak in India, Yicai China reported.

The 40-day Lunar New Year travel season, known as chunyun, begins on 2 February this year and runs until 13 March, involving billions of passenger journeys across the country.

In spite of the unease, Chinese public health authorities and virologists say that Nipah’s characteristics make a major outbreak unlikely. Although the virus can be fatal – with mortality rates as high as 75 per cent – it spreads far less efficiently than respiratory pathogens like influenza or Sars-CoV-2.

In a recent notice, China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention called for “heightened vigilance” against imported infectious diseases during the travel season, warning that illnesses such as malaria, dengue, chikungunya, and Lassa fever could be brought in by travellers returning from overseas. Nipah, however, wasn’t specifically named. According to reports, 339,442 Chinese tourists visited India in 2019 and about 142,000 Indians traveled to China. India resumed granting tourist visas to Chinese nationals from July last year in a new step to normalise Delhi’s ties with Beijing.

The diplomatic restoration of tourist visas came after a gap of five years due to degradation of ties between India and China following a 2020 military clash between their troops along the disputed Himalayan border.

File. Health workers shift a man with symptoms of Nipah virus to an isolation ward at a hospital in Kozhikode in southern India on 16 September 2023 (AFP via Getty)

Nipah was first detected in Southeast Asia after outbreaks in Malaysia and Singapore between 1998 and 1999, where infections were largely linked to pig farm workers and people in close contact with livestock.

The virus can infect a wide range of animals, including pigs, horses, goats, sheep, cats and dogs, according to the Centre for Health Protection in Hong Kong.

Since the turn of the century, repeated human outbreaks have been reported in India and Bangladesh, most often between December and April. These outbreaks have been strongly associated with the consumption of raw date palm sap contaminated by fruit bats, the virus’s natural reservoir.

India’s previous outbreak was recorded in the southern state of Kerala in mid-2025, when four infections were confirmed.

Human-to-human infection remains possible through exposure to an infected person’s bodily fluids or waste, creating the potential for hospital-based transmission as well as spread within families, Feng Zijian, former deputy director general of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Global Times.

Despite its severity, Nipha does not spread easily, Zhuang Shilihe, a Guangzhou-based medical specialist, told the state media outlet.

He said his assessment was based on lessons from contact tracing during past sporadic outbreaks worldwide.

Nipah causes a range of symptoms, from mild illness to severe respiratory distress and brain inflammation. Encephalitis is the most dangerous complication and often leads to confusion, seizures, coma and, in severe cases, death. There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines against Nipah.

Several other countries in Asia are also tightening screening in the wake of the Indian outbreak.

Khaosod English, a news outlet in Bangkok, reported that Thailand had tightened health screening at key airports, like Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang and Phuket, for passengers coming from West Bengal.

The Korea Herald reported that South Korea had already classified Nipah as a top-tier infectious disease requiring immediate reporting and isolation.

Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection said that it would “monitor the situation and implement appropriate prevention and control measures based on risk assessments to safeguard public health and the well-being of citizens”.