(Forbes) – At least 345 people in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have been hospitalized with an unidentified illness that includes a range of symptoms like seizures, nausea, loss of consciousness and has led to at least one fatality — potentially creating another public health challenge as the region continues to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The outbreak of the illness has centered around the town of Eluru, with the sole fatality being a 45-year-old man, who died on Sunday. The cause of the illness has yet to be established but local authorities said that all patients, currently 345, have tested negative for Covid-19, ruling it out as a possible cause, the Hindustan Times reported.
YS Jaganmohan Reddy, the state’s chief minister, visited the patients on Monday while the regional opposition party has accused him and his government of mishandling the situation while suggesting that the illness may have been caused by contaminated water supply.
The government, however, has claimed that water samples from the affected areas showed no signs of contamination, and no viral infections were detected among the patients. Calling the situation in Eluru just “the tip of an iceberg,” former Andhra Pradesh chief minister and current opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu accused the government of negligence, tweeting: “Can there be a more unfortunate & bigger failure than this? READ MORE
