Recently, an unknown disease emerged in southern India, affecting several hundred people. The authorities called in experts to investigate this disease causing convulsions, nausea and other chronic pain.
Eluru is a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants located in the Indian province of Andhra Pradesh, in the south-east of the country. As the local daily newspaper The Indian Express explains in an article of December 9, 2020, a mysterious disease has affected at least 550 people there. . Even today, patients are flocking to hospitals. Faced with this situation, the government was quick to mobilize a team of virologists to carry out the investigation.
According to the doctors on site, the disease in question causes an epileptic seizure lasting three to five minutes . It also causes nausea and vomiting, as well as chronic pain in the head and back. In addition, patients show significant signs of anxiety.
Of those affected, 300 were admitted to hospitals in Eluru during the weekend of December 6, 2020. No less than 150 other patients also sought medical attention. help the next day and several dozen on Tuesday. Most patients were able to return home just hours after admission. However, hospitals still reported one death.
Virologists have carried out analyzes on certain foods consumed abundantly by the population, such as rice or cooking oil. They even analyzed urine and blood samples, without really conclusive results. Nevertheless, they still detected in the blood samples the presence of heavy metals such as lead and nickel. Is this a drinking water issue? Nothing is certain since it seems that other people have fallen ill in other localities near Eluru which do not depend on its water supply.
Some people suspect "mass hysteria," but doctors are adamant that people admitted to hospital have had real symptoms. Experts also said it was impossible to make a firm diagnosis based on the symptoms. However, local authorities said that so far, no cases of human-to-human transmission was not proven. With a deplorable Covid-19 record (more than 9.7 million cases for around 140,000 deaths), India is the second most affected country. It therefore does not need a new epidemic, which is moreover an unknown disease.
