India Hit With an Outbreak of the Deadly Nipah Virus, Top Government Insiders Worry U.S. Is Next

Four years after Globe exclusively reported on claims that Chinese spies were developing a bioweapon based on the brain-savaging Nipah virus, an outbreak of the catastrophic illness has exploded in northern India.

Now, top U.S. government insiders fear the fatal flare-up in West Bengal has already brought the hellish pathogen — which chillingly leaves 75 percent of its victims dead — to America.

Nipah outbreaks have so far been contained in Asia — but experts warn a major eruption could occur in the U.S. with an influx of infected individuals.

“People from West Bengal routinely fly to hubs like Delhi, Mumbai and across the Middle East to America,” says an insider. “We may already have a global pandemic on our hands — and it would be much worse than COVID, which only has a 4 percent mortality rate.”

Singapore and Hong Kong were the most recent countries to impose travel restrictions from India, along with temperature screenings and mandatory health declaration forms, per Daily Mail. In Europe, Britain has issued warnings to its citizens visiting the region.

India’s health ministry confirmed last month that 196 people who came into contact with infected patients are now being monitored for the virus.

Nipah can cause flu-like symptoms and the brain inflammation encephalitis, resulting in catastrophic damage to the organ, according to the World Health Organization.

A Nipah virus was “absolutely” something the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should monitor,” cautions Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease expert in Texas.

Military sources say China has sent teams to India to harvest Nipah virus samples from bats and have been conducting experiments with the acquired genetic material.

“We have credible information the Chinese government is weaponizing the incurable Nipah virus,” says a military analyst.

As Globe was among the first to report, sources say COVID-19 originated at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, where scientists used “gain-of-function” research to develop bat coronaviruses to be more infectious to humans — and the killer bug spread across the globe like wildfire following a lab leak.

Holland’s Jayasree K. Iyer, executive director of Access to Medicine Foundation, fears “Nipah could blow any moment” and warns “the next pandemic could be a drug-resistant infection.”

Meanwhile, intelligence experts say the Indian outbreak just 1,600 miles from China’s border raises stark fears it is an unleashed bioweapon that will result in another deadly pandemic.

“With no current cure, it would become a nightmare scenario,” a source says. “Nipah makes COVID look like a common cold.”