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India convened a team of medical experts in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh after a mysterious illness killed one person and sent several hundred to hospital.
A representative of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party said preliminary blood tests revealed large amounts of lead and nickel, according to BBC News.
The patients had a variety of symptoms, from nausea to seizures to fainting, doctors say. And this is happening while India is struggling with a large number of coronavirus cases. Andhra Pradesh was one of the worst affected states, with more than 800,000 cases, the third highest in the country. But Covid-19 does not appear to be the cause of the hospitalizations over the weekend. The health minister of that state, Alla Kali Krishna Srinivas, said that all the patients were tested for coronavirus and the results were negative.
Srinivas said the patients’ blood samples showed no evidence of a viral infection.
„We ruled out water pollution or air pollution as the cause, after officials visited areas where people got sick.“, he said. “It is a mysterious disease and only laboratory tests will reveal what it is. “
However, Narasimha Rao, a representative of the ruling party, sent a message to local journalists saying that preliminary blood tests from the Delhi Institute of Medical Sciences showed that most of the samples contained lead, nickel and other heavy metals.
A statement from the Indian Ministry of Health said Vice President Venkaiah Naidu had dispatched a team of experts to Eluru, where most of the illnesses occurred.
Authorities said 500 people had been hospitalized so far, 300 of whom had been discharged in the meantime. 19 are in serious condition and have been transferred to larger hospitals for complex treatments.
Jaganmohan Reddy, a senior Indian official, visited the Eluru government hospital and met with patients in treatment.
Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) are also expected to come to Eluru for further research.
The opposition Telugu Desam party has called for an investigation into the incident, insisting that the source of the mysterious disease is contamination.
Publisher: DC
