A 25-year-old female nurse infected with the Nipah virus died on Thursday after being unconscious in hospital since January 6.

After testing positive for Nipah in early January, she had tested negative on February 8. But she had developed sepsis by then and died after a cardiac arrest, a state health department official said.

Her body will be handed over to her family, said officials at the hospital where she died at 4.30pm.

The health department official said this was the first death of a Nipah patient in Bengal since 2007, when the state had faced an outbreak of the virus.

“In the present episode, two people were detected with Nipah. These were the first Nipah cases in Bengal since 2007. One of them was discharged from hospital while the other died on Friday,” the official said.

In 2006-07, there were several deaths, he said.

Both nurses were treated at the Narayana Multispeciality Hospital in Barasat, North 24-Parganas, where they worked.

“The (female) patient had been under prolonged critical care for severe systemic complications, including sepsis with septic shock and autonomic dysfunction,” a hospital official said.

“She had shown temporary improvement and was off ventilatory support for more than 10 days.”

The hospital official said: “But because of the progression of her systemic inflammatory condition and multi-organ involvement, her condition subsequently worsened, and she required full haemodynamic and ventilatory support over the past few days... She tested negative for Nipah, according to the lab report received on February 8... She suffered a cardiac arrest that led to her death.”

The nurse’s condition started deteriorating last Thursday.

The health official said a team of critical-care experts from government hospitals had monitored both nurses’ treatment. “We provided expensive drugs like remdesivir,” he said.

The nurse had returned home to East Burdwan from work on December 31 with a high fever and respiratory problems.

While being treated at home, she fell unconscious on January 4. Family members took her to Burdwan Medical College and Hospital, and later took her to the Barasat hospital on January 6 after her condition worsened.

Health officials said she was the “index case”. An index case, or “patient zero”, is the first infected individual identified by authorities during an outbreak, although experts caution that such a patient may not be the primary source.

“There is no need for panic. We have tested 202 samples from people who were in contact with the two patients, and all the reports were negative. There is no trace of any other Nipah case now,” the official said.

He said Nipah surveillance was continuing in several districts.

The male nurse, who had been discharged earlier, has improved and visited the hospital for a checkup on Wednesday.