Specialists now know where these cases of pneumonia in Argentina come from, but the disease continues to rage. The disease claimed a fifth victim on Sunday in Tucuman, in the northwest of the country, announced the province’s health ministry. “He is a 64-year-old man, with comorbidities, who was in serious condition in a public hospital,” the ministry said in a statement.
A total of 11 people showed similar symptoms, and six are still under treatment, three of whom are still hospitalized, according to the province’s health minister, Luis Medina Cruz. The agent that caused the focus of bilateral pneumonia “is legionella”, the Argentine Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, had declared the day before at a press conference in Tucuman, adding that the precise type of legionella was being determined. identification.
Possible contamination through the respiratory tract
Eleven cases in total have been identified, centered around a private clinic in San Miguel de Tucuman, capital of Tucuman province. Saturday morning the provincial health authorities announced a fourth death since Monday, a 48-year-old man also presenting with comorbidities. Before him, two members of the nursing staff of the private clinic had died, then a 70-year-old woman, a patient in this same clinic where she had undergone surgery.
Initial examinations had ruled out Covid-19, influenza, type A and B influenza and hantaviruses (transmitted by rodents) as the cause of these pneumonias. Samples had been sent to the Malbran Institute in Buenos Aires, a national reference in the field of infectious diseases, of which the minister delivered the first results. Legionellosis is a serious pulmonary infection of bacterial origin, the contamination of which can be done through the respiratory route by inhaling the bacteria, “through water or air conditioning”, recalled Minister Carla Vizzotti.
The president of the Medical College of the province of Tucuman, Hector Sale, had stressed this week that the pathology observed in Tucuman was “aggressive”, but that it was not a priori a disease involving transmission from person to person. person, “due to the fact that the close contacts of these patients do not show any symptoms”.