Soldiers have begun killing strays and veterinarians are testing pet dogs. Officials do not yet know how animals aside from pigs contract the disease or if they can pass it to humans, Mohd. Initial tests on 1,400 horses have shown no sign of the virus. Health officials first identified the disease as Japanese encephalitis. But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then detected the Nipah virus, a strain similar to the very rare Hendra virus discovered in Australia in 1994.
Symptoms are the same for both - high fever, aches, eventual coma and death.
Soldiers have killed some 883,300 pigs in three states. Pigs are believed to catch Nipah and Japanese encephalitis from the Culex mosquito. The CDC said last week that 111 people had died and that 256 suspected cases of viral encephalitis have been reported. Malaysia's health ministry puts the number dead at 98.