India has summoned a team of medical experts to the southern state of Andhra Pradesh after a mysterious disease 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 .
Patients presented with various symptoms, from nausea to seizures and fainting, doctors say. And this is happening while India is struggling with a large number of coronavirus cases. Andhra Pradesh was one of the most affected states, with over 800,000 cases, the third highest figure in the country. But Covid-19 does not appear to be the cause of hospitalizations over the weekend. The state health minister, Alla Kali Krishna Srinivas, said all patients had been 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 contamination or air pollution as the cause, after officials visited areas where people got sick ," he said. " It's a mysterious disease and only a laboratory test 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 by 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 that Vice President Venkaiah Naidu had sent a team of experts to Eluru, where most of the illnesses occurred.
Officials 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 undergoing treatment.
Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) are also expected to arrive in Eluru for further investigations.
Opposition party Telugu Desam has called for an investigation into the incident, insisting the source of the mysterious illness is contamination.
Editor : D.C.
