The worst fears of Kerala were confirmed on Tuesday with a student hospitalised with symptoms of Nipah was confirmed to have contracted the deadly infection that killed 17 people in the first outbreak a year ago.

State health minister K.K. Shylaja held a media conference to announce the confirmation by the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune.

As Kerala deployed protocols to prevent the virus from spreading, two of the 23-year-old student’s friends and two nurses taking care of him contracted fever on Tuesday.

The health authorities moved the two students to an isolation ward opened at the Government Medical College in Kalamassery, Ernakulam. The two nurses have been admitted to the private hospital in Ernakulam where the 23-year-old student, whose name has been withheld, is being treated.

A teacher of the Nipah patient has also complained of fever and has been kept under observation at her home in Thrissur.

The state has switched to a health emergency mode and deployed all necessary protocols after the 23-year-old patient’s blood, urine and mouth swab tests conducted at the NIV branch in Alappuzha in Kerala, and Manipal Institute of Virology in neighbouring Karnataka confirmed the presence of the Nipah virus.

“We had suspected that it was a case of Nipah. But we had to wait for the NIV’s confirmation, which came this (Tuesday) morning,” Shylaja said in Kochi, Ernakulam.

Blood samples of the two students and the two nurses have also been sent to the NIVs at Alappuzha and Pune.

“There is no need to panic although this is a very serious situation. With our experience in battling the disease in Kozhikode (last year), the health department is confident that we can contain it this time too,” Shylaja said in Kochi, Ernakulam.

She said the patient was responding well to medicines.

The first ever Nipah case in Kerala was reported from a village in Kozhikode district in May last year. Seventeen people, including nurse Lini Puthussery who risked her life to treat patients, had died.

“We have prepared a list of 86 people who had come in contact with the patient (in Ernakulam). All of them are under the observation of the health department,” said Shylaja, who has shifted base from state capital Thiruvananthapuram to Kochi to coordinate the efforts.

The condition of the patient is not as serious as the ones reported in Kozhikode last year. “The treatment is working as the fever has subsided and he is fully conscious,” said the minister.

Efforts are on to localise the area from where the patient contracted the disease.

A native of North Paravur in Ernakulam, the patient is a student of a college at Thodupuzha in Idukki district.

While he used to live in a rented home with four other college mates in Thodupuzha, he and 15 other students recently moved to Thrissur for an internship with a private company.

It is, however, not clear whether he had fever when he reached Thrissur on May 20.

Thrissur district officials have confirmed that he had gone to a private hospital in the district before being taken to the super-specialty private hospital in Ernakulam.

The government has directed the forest and wildlife departments to investigate the source of the infection.

The district medical officer of Thrissur, Dr K.J. Reena, said there was no point in panicking.

“The virus will spread human-to-human only when symptoms begin to manifest in the host after the incubation period of seven to 14 days,” she said.

The Nipah patient’s college and surroundings are also under observation for any signs of the disease, said the Idukki district medical officer, Dr N. Priya.

She said officials from the departments of forest and wildlife had visited the rented house where the patient had stayed in Thodupuzha. “They did not find anything to conclude that the patient contracted the disease in Thodupuzha,” Priya said.

A six-member central team of epidemiologists and scientists have arrived from Delhi to assist the Kerala health department.

Isolation wards have been opened at the government medical colleges in Kozhikode and Thrissur, while all districts have been instructed to be vigilant.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan assured the people that the government was up to it and there was nothing to panic about.

He warned mischief-mongers against spreading wrong information through social media. “Stringent action will be taken against those who spread misinformation,” he wrote on Facebook.