The Palghar administration issued an alert against a spread of the Congo fever across the Maharashtra district on Tuesday after the neighboring Gujarat districts declared four cases of the Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) commonly known as ‘Congo’. The disease is said to be spreading from animals to humans also it’s highly vulnerable across border districts of Maharashtra. Palghar is very close to Gujarat’s Valsad district. Luckily, no cases of Congo are reported from the Palghar.
The district administration said that in the wake of the outbreak of COVID-19, it’s a matter of concern, therefore, he asked cattle feeders, meat seller, and staffs of the state animal husbandry department to watch out for symptoms and to take precautions and implement preventive measures, as there is no specific and useful treatment against the disease.
This virus transmits from one animal to another through the bite of Hyalomma tick and transmits to humans through contact with the blood of infected animals and by eating the meat of infected animals, but Human-to-human transmission can occur resulting from close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected persons.
The main symptoms are headache, high fever, joint pains, abdomen pain and nausea, redness of the eyes, bleeding from the nose. The virus causes severe viral hemorrhagic fever outbreaks, with a case fatality rate of 10 to 40 percent, as per the World Health Organization (WHO).
Subsequently, Farmers have been instructed to ensure proper hygiene of cattle sheds, wearing masks, gumboots, and hand gloves.
As the district is already tackling growing cases of Covid-19 in rural areas, and on Monday, the district had 34,558 cases of which rural Palghar had 12,279.
