Singapore will conduct temperature screening for travellers arriving on flights from areas where Nipah virus outbreak has been reported, including India, the government said Wednesday.
The Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA) is “closely monitoring the outbreak of Nipah virus infection (NiV) in West Bengal, India. This is the seventh Nipah virus outbreak in India since 2001,” said the agency in a release.
This is one of six measures that will be implemented in the country as part of its initial response to the Nipah virus outbreak in West Bengal, it said.
In New Delhi, citing reports received from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the Union Health Ministry said on Tuesday, said only two confirmed cases of Nipah Virus disease have been reported from West Bengal from December last year till date.
In Singapore, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), meanwhile, will step up surveillance of newly arrived migrant workers from South Asia and engage MOM primary care providers to increase vigilance, according to a report by the Channel News Asia.
In addition to the temperature screening, Singapore will also require medical practitioners and laboratories to notify CDA immediately of all confirmed and suspected cases of the virus.
The CDA has also alerted hospitals and emergency departments to be vigilant for Nipah virus infections in patients with compatible symptoms and recent travel history to West Bengal, the agency said.
Health advisories will also be disseminated to travellers at points of entry to Singapore. They will instruct inbound travellers to seek medical attention if they are unwell after travel, and provide outbound travellers with health precautions they can take.
The CDA will also reach out to their counterparts in South Asia to better understand the situation.
“Work is ongoing to establish a global platform for countries to report genome sequencing of detected cases,” CDA added.
Sharing CDA's media release in a Facebook post, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said: “We need to be on alert all the time, as deadly outbreaks will happen from time to time, in different parts of the world.
“The key thing we need to watch out for in such outbreaks is sustained human-to-human transmission. If transmission is only between animals to humans, or human to human in a very close setting after contacting human fluids, there is much less worry because the virus will not spread far and wide, like SARS or COVID-19,” the Channel quoted Minister Ong as saying.
