A third person died this week in Argentina from a type of pneumonia of unknown origin, with deaths so far limited to a single clinic, health authorities said on Thursday.
Nine people in the northwestern province of Tucumán have contracted a mysterious respiratory illness, including eight members of the medical staff at the private clinic, Tucumán Health Minister Luis Medina Ruiz told reporters.
Three people – two health workers and now also a patient at the clinic – have died since Monday.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional office of the World Health Organization, is in contact with the Argentine Ministry of Health as they investigate the cluster of cases. PAHO said in a statement.
The authorities are carrying out tests, but Medina said that they have already ruled out COVID-19, flu, influenza type A and B, the bacterial disease legionella and hantavirus transmitted by rodents.
The samples have been sent to the Malbran Institute in Buenos Aires.
The latest victim was a 70-year-old woman who had been admitted to the clinic for surgery.
Medina said the woman could have been “patient zero, but that is being evaluated.”
The mysterious disease claimed its first victim among the clinic’s health personnel on Monday and a second two days later.
The first six patients began to present symptoms between August 18 and 23.
Medina said Wednesday that the patients suffered “a serious respiratory condition with bilateral pneumonia… very similar to covid.”
Symptoms included vomiting, high fever, diarrhea, and body aches.
Of the six people receiving treatment, four were in serious condition in hospital and two in home isolation.
All other clinic staff were being monitored.
Experts were testing water and air conditioners for possible contamination or poisoning.
The province’s health ministry said on Wednesday the outbreak could stem from an infectious agent, but investigators did not rule out “toxic or environmental causes.”
Infectious disease specialist Mario Raya said Thursday that “at the moment we have no cases outside” the affected clinic.
Added Héctor Sale, president of the College of Physicians of the province of Tucumán: “We are not facing a disease that is transmitted from person to person” since no cases have been identified among the close contacts of any of the patients.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, told Reuters that since the lungs are badly affected, the cause is likely to be something the patients inhaled.
Osterholm said “mysterious illnesses” sometimes occur, and most of the time they can be explained by some local outbreak that doesn’t have pandemic implications.
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