One person has died and at least 450 others have been put in hospitals in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in India by a hitherto unknown illness.
According to the reports, over the weekend hundreds of people in Eluru, a city in the southern state, collapsed and experienced seizure and nausea, and some even foamed at the mouth. Some of those who collapsed reported having burning eyes.
A 45-year-old man admitted to the hospital had a heart attack and died.
The local authorities say that 455 people were hospitalized due to the disease, and some 200 have been discharged already. The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh also visited the hospital to see the patients.
The novel illness has only aggravated the already overwhelmed healthcare system of Andhra Pradesh, one of the worst affected states of India with above 800,000 coronavirus cases.
Experts from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a hotspot of medical research in Delhi, visited the city to investigate the mystery illness. They reportedly looked into various potential sources of the disease, including contaminated comestibles and water, and airborne poisoning.
A city official said that the patients have been tested for Covid-19 and their results have come out as negative.
“Specialist doctors are still working on finding out the cause of this disease and we are waiting for results from the labs. It could be food or waterborne or airborne or some other condition. But we do know this was very localised, the people affected all lived in the same city”, he said