Doctors and experts are still being spooked by the mystery fever in Gujarat’s Kutch even as they struggle to unravel the ‘mystery’ behind the fever that has reportedly claimed at least 14 lives in less than a week.
The state government has formed a team to zero in on the exact cause behind the deaths between September 3 and 8, but while some of the symptoms are similar to those seen in pneumonitis, others are not and they point towards varied prognoses, making it difficult to find an exact mapping of the disease.
The team of experts ran an array of tests in the area encompassing seven villages located in Lakhpat and Abdasa talukas of Kutch. The Rapid Response Team (RRT) in its investigations have ruled out infection by Leptospirosis, Typhoid and Covid. Zoonotic diseases, too, have been ruled out by the Animal Husbandry department. The deceased are all from the Jat Maldhari tribe, a community of herdsmen in the upper arid reaches of Gujarat.
What is making their jobs tougher is that since the deaths were reported retrospectively, and from a mix of private and public hospitals, the administration has not been able to run tests either through biopsies or post mortem examinations in a majority of the cases. However, blood samples of two persons, who died after the RRT reached Kutch, have been collected and sent for testing to the National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV) in Pune.
Notably, the Gujarat government has sought that the NIV test the samples for a wide array of pathogens including, but not limited to, Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), Scrub Typhus, Chandipura Vesiculovirus (CHPV), Japanese Encephalitis and even Plague, which the state has been privy to in the past.
The health department has ruled out any outbreak of communicable disease due to the lack of clusters. Besides, from the 27 contacts and symptomatic persons found in the health survey, the RRT found only two cases of Falciparum Malaria, two cases of Swine Flu, and a case of Dengue.
Meanwhile, Kutch Collector Amit Arora said, “While 10 patients died due to pneumonitis, two died of heart attacks, one by brain stroke and one had blood cancer. One patient is under treatment.”
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