A new mysterious pneumonia Argentina is spreading. The newspapers relaunch the news. A little fear is spreading and a new emergency seems to be almost ready. Three people died and six others are suffering from “pneumonia of unknown origin”, as reported by the New York Post citing the Argentine health authorities. Of the nine sick people, eight were health workers and one was an intensive care patient in a private clinic in Tecumán, a region 800 km northwest of Buenos Aires.
30 tests were carried out on infected people, which excluded the presence of Covid, flu, type A and B flu, hantavirus. The local health minister, Luis Medina Ruiz, confirmed that “what these patients have in common is the severe respiratory condition with bilateral pneumonia and compromised with radiographic images very similar to Covid, but the latter has been excluded “. The European Center for Disease Control is monitoring the case and WHO scientists are also following the situation.
Samples of the unknown virus were sent to the Malbran Institute in Buenos Aires and the National Administration of Health Laboratories and Institutes of Argentina. The Corriere della Sera specifies that, after the first infections, the hospital was quarantined. In addition, the Milanese newspaper provides details on the three victims: a 45-year-old nurse and a 68-year-old doctor who worked in the private clinic. The most recent victim, the third, was a 70-year-old patient, hospitalized for a gallbladder operation. This elderly lady is suspected to be “patient zero”, although Ruiz says these factors are still “being evaluated”. The first six patients started showing symptoms between 18 and 22 August. The initial manifestations on the three most recent patients developed between 20 and 23 August: according to the New York Posttwo of them are receiving clinical treatment, while the third is being monitored (watchful waiting?) at home.
After the initial panic, the statements of the medical secretary of the provincial health system, Miguel Ferre Contreras, seem more reassuring: “The clinical situation has been going on for more than a week and no secondary cases appeared, so we can say that we are not dealing with a virus that is transmitted from person to person. In principle it is something that it is not circulating in the community“. So it is hoped that no race to the masks will be necessary, except for alarmism due to the aftermath of the recent pandemic and to which “the unique newspaper of the virus” has accustomed us.
The suspect continues the Courieris that the culprit of the infection may be the Legionella bacterium that causes a pathology known as the “legionnaire’s disease”, Characterized by pneumonia with high fever. Local inspectors are carrying out checks in the air conditioning system and in the hospital’s water tanks, that is, in the environments where the microbe in question could generally reproduce.
All this, concludes the New York Posthappens two and a half years after the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic. Since then, many diseases have spread fear of another pandemic, with the United States even declaring a state of emergency for monkeypox.
Andrea Gebbia, 3 September 2022