News > Here’s how the deadly Nipah virus jumps from bats to humans

Here’s how the deadly Nipah virus jumps from bats to humans

The scientists said as long as 60 per cent of the bats in a population have protective antibodies against the virus, there’s unlikely to be an outbreak.

What this study showed is that, over time, bats in the wild lose the antibodies which protect them from NiV reinfection. When a great enough proportion of bats are immune to the virus, there’s not much transmission, but when this fraction drops below a threshold the whole colony becomes susceptible.