OBJECTIVES

: Nipah virus is a zoonotic virus, harbored by bats and lethal to humans. Bat to human spill overs occur every winter in Bangladesh, Australia, and Malaysia. In recent, more than 15 people died in India and the distributional areas are continuously increasing worldwide, especially Southeast Asia. However, there is significant heterogeneity in the number of spillovers detected in these countries, and the climatic understanding and spatial potentiality remains unexplained. In this context, the present study aimed to predict the influence of current and future climate on Nipah virus distribution worldwide.

METHODS

: The maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modelling was used to predict current and future potentiality based on 53 virus outbreak points, and bio-climatic variables. The predictions were made by using HadGEM2-CC and GFDL-CM3 climate model of Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) fifth assessment for the period of 2050 and 2070 with RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways) scenario of 4.5 and 8.5.

RESULTS

: Bio-climatic variables contributions were assessed using jackknife test and mean AOC 0.888, TSS 0.698, and kappa 0.733 indicate the model performs with very high accuracy. The major influencing variables for the Nipah Virus distribution will be Precipitation of Warmest Quarter (45.01±0.7%), Temperature Seasonality (19.09±0.8), precipitation seasonality (12.56±1.3), and precipitation of wettest quarter (19.06±0.13). The model result shows that the current Nipah virus high potential countries are Bangladesh, Myanmar, Southern and Eastern India, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam, Eastern Australia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, South-Eastern China. In addition to climate change scenarios (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5), there will be a drastic increase in the suitable Nipah virus outbreak and distribution by 2050 and 2070 for all the selected RCP scenarios.

CONCLUSIONS

: This study provides credible guidelines to different Health Organization worldwide for preparedness and planning intervention measures in the context of current and future climate.