Doctors rule out Covid, influenza and hantavirus as culprits but continue to run more tests. Three people have died and five are in hospital after developing a “pneumonia of unknown origin”, Argentinian health authorities have announced.

According to the Ministry of Health in Tucumán – a small region in the northwest of the country some 800 miles from the capital, Buenos Aires – nine people in the sameprivate clinic unit have contracted mystery pneumonia.

Authorities are concerned about the deadly outbreak because the usual suspects – including Covid, influenza and hantavirus – have been ruled out. Five of the six affected, and both of those who so far died, are also health care workers, suggesting an infectious agent may be involved. “What these patients have in common is the severe respiratory condition with bilateral pneumonia and compromise in [x-ray] images very similar to Covid, but that is ruled out,” Luis Medina Ruiz, Tucumán’s minister of health, said on Wednesday, according to local media.

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