It’s not about Covid-19. In Argentina’s northwest Tucuman province, two people died this week from severe pneumonia “of unknown origin”, the country’s health authorities said on Wednesday (August 31st). In total, six people – caregivers and a patient from the same intensive care unit of a clinic in Tucuman – presented this pathology which intrigues the medical profession.
“The cases relate to five health workers and a patient in the intensive care unit of a private clinic in San Miguel de Tucumán, who began to show symptoms between August 18 and 22,” said the province’s health ministry. One person died on Monday 29 and another on Wednesday 31. Three others are hospitalized, and a sixth, in satisfactory condition, is in home isolation, he added. “No new cases have been identified since August 22”including among close contacts of these patients, which the Minister Luis Medina Ruiz, qualified as “positive news”ensuring that the situation is “under control”.
“These patients have in common a severe respiratory state with bilateral pneumonia, and present imaging very similar to Covid, but this has been ruled out”, Luis Medina Ruiz told reporters. Cases “have already been tested for Covid, influenza, influenza A and B, hantavirus (infections transmitted by rodents), and 25 other germs”, all of which tested negative, he added.
According to the Minister, it may be an infectious agent, but toxic and environmental causes are not excluded. Analyzes are in progress in particular on water and air conditioning systems. Samples have been sent for further analysis to the national reference laboratory, the Instituto Malbran in Buenos Aires, and results are expected by the end of the week.