7-year-old boy from Kerala diagnosed with WNV feve

The West Nile Virus (WNV) fever is a mosquito-borne viral infection, which is rare in India. It is a single-stranded RNA virus that causes West Nile fever. It is a member of the family Flaviviridae, specifically from the genus Flavivirus, which also contains the Zika virus, dengue virus, and yellow fever virus. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stated that the WNV is transmitted to humans through bites from Culex mosquitoes which get infected when they feed on infected birds. The infection could be confirmed only if the second samples test positive. Hence, birds are the natural hosts of WNV. Symptoms include fever, headache, tiredness, and body aches, nausea, vomiting, occasionally with a skin rash on the trunk of the body, and swollen lymph glands. It is in news because a 7-year-old boy from Kerala was recently diagnosed with the WNV fever. For this issue, the Union has dispatched a multi-disciplinary Central team from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to assess the spread of WNV in Kerala.