Authorities in Kerala are racing to trace people who may have been in contact with a child who died of the Nipah virus.
Officials have placed dozens of people under quarantine who came into contact with a 12 year-old boy who died on Sunday after being infected.
More than 200 contacts of the boy have been identified and are being monitored. Most of them are healthcare workers.
About 30 people, including six of those who were symptomatic, have so far been cleared.
Nipah is a deadly disease that presents with respiratory symptoms, killing up to 75 per cent of those infected.
Eight samples of parents and healthcare workers were sent to Pune on Sunday. They had interacted with the boy closely. So it is a huge relief to get negative results
Veena George,
Kerala health minister
"The negative results give us a huge relief," said Health Minister Veena George at a press conference in Kozhikode.
"Eight samples of parents and healthcare workers were sent to Pune on Sunday. They had interacted with the boy closely. So it is a huge relief to get negative results,” she said.
Like Covid-19, which has ravaged Kerala, Nipah is a zoonotic disease that is believed to originate in bats.
In Nipah’s case, fruit bats of the family Pteropodidae are the natural hosts. They do not appear to suffer illness as a result.
In people, respiratory issues are common in the early stages, as well as fever, headache and drowsiness. It can result in encephalitis, or inflammation in the brain. Symptoms begin five to 14 days after exposure.
It is known to spread among those in close contact with patients, such as family and caregivers.
There is no specific treatment and no vaccine.
In 2018, 17 of 18 people died after being affected by a Nipah outbreak in Kerala The outbreak is though to have begun after the virus spread from bats, its host, to people via fruit.
Experts believe the latest outbreak probably started in a similar way, after the boy ate rambutan, a type of fruit that grows on a tree on the family’s property.
A team from the Animal Husbandry department visited the victim’s house to collect samples. They confirmed the presence of bats near by.
Districts bordering Kerala are being asked to look out for people arriving from the state with symptoms such as fever, severe weakness, headache, respiratory distress, cough, vomiting, muscle pain, convulsions and diarrhoea.
The virus was first identified after an outbreak among pig farmers in Malaysia in the late 1990s. No cases have been identified there since.
But it has caused almost annual outbreaks in Bangladesh since it was first discovered there in 2001, according to the World Health Organisation.
During the 2018 outbreak, the UAE banned the sale of fruit imported from Kerala.
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Alyssa Ayres, Oxford University Press
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Virat Kohli (capt), Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Vijay Shankar, MS Dhoni (wk), Kedar Jadhav, Dinesh Karthik, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami
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