RAS question
According to the NCDC update of January 2026, where was the West Bengal Nipah cluster detected?
Correct answer: (A) A private hospital in Barasat, North 24 Parganas.
The West Bengal Nipah cluster was detected among two healthcare workers at the same private hospital in Barasat, North 24 Parganas district.
Explanation
WHO's 30 January 2026 Disease Outbreak News says India notified it of two laboratory-confirmed Nipah virus cases in West Bengal on 26 January 2026. Both cases were healthcare workers at the same private hospital in Barasat, North 24 Parganas district, and the source records that the National Centre for Disease Control announced no further confirmed West Bengal cases from December 2025 to that update. This is why the location is not a general district-level answer or a city-wide public-health facility: the reported cluster was tied to two hospital-based healthcare workers at a specific private hospital in Barasat.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) Kolkata is not the reported site; the WHO update places both confirmed healthcare-worker cases at the same private hospital in Barasat, North 24 Parganas.
- (C) Siliguri appears only as the site of a previous West Bengal Nipah outbreak in 2001, not as the location of the January 2026 cluster.
- (D) Darjeeling is not mentioned as the cluster location; the update identifies Barasat in North 24 Parganas district.
Concept
This tests disease-outbreak surveillance and official public-health reporting, especially the ability to link an outbreak update to its exact location. Such questions recur in RAS because current Science and Technology often asks for precise institutional and geographic details from official health advisories.