Argentina

Legionellosis – Argentina

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As of 3 September 2022, a cluster of 11 cases of severe pneumonia,including four deaths, have been reported in San Miguel de Tucumán city, Tucuman Province, Argentina. Legionella spp. was isolated in the samples from four cases. Legionellosis is a pneumonia-like illness that varies in severity from mild febrile illness to a serious and sometimes fatal form of pneumonia. Cases were initially reported as being pneumonia of unknown cause. Legionella bacteria was identified as the causative organism on 3 September.

All cases presented with bilateral pneumonia, fever, myalgia, abdominal pain, and dyspnea between 18 and 25 August 2022 and are epidemiologically linked to one health facility. Of the 11 cases, eight are health workers of the facility; three are patients of the health facility. Three of the four deaths were among health workers.

Health authorities are coordinating cluster investigation activities, active case finding to identify additional cases, contact tracing and public health activities to limit further spread.

Outbreak overview

On 29 August 2022, WHO was notified by the Ministry of Health of Argentina of a report from the Ministry of Public Health of Tucumán Province, of a cluster of six cases of bilateral pneumonia without an etiological cause identified in San Miguel de Tucumán city, Tucuman Province, Argentina 1. All six cases were linked to one private health facility in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán, with the onset of symptoms between 18 and 22 August 2022. The six cases included five health workers and one patient who was admitted to the clinic for an unrelated condition and then subsequently to the intensive care unit after developing pneumonia. In addition to bilateral pneumonia, all cases presented with fever, myalgia, abdominal pain, and dyspnea.

On 1 September, three additional cases were identified through active case finding – all health workers from the same private health facility, aged 30 to 44 years – with similar signs and symptoms to the initial six cases identified 2. The onset of symptoms for these cases was between 20 and 25 August 2022.

Between 2 and 3 September, two additional cases were identified, an 81-year-old male and a 64-year-old male, both with comorbidities, who were hospitalized and presented similar clinical presentation as the previous cases 3.

As of 3 September 2022, 11 cases have been identified, four of whom have died (three health workers). Eight of the 11 reported cases are health workers of the same health facility. The median age of the cases is 45 years; seven are male. Ten cases had underlying conditions and/or risk factors for severe disease, including the four reported deaths. Four cases are still hospitalized as of 3 September. Contacts of the cases are under follow-up and, to date, none have developed symptoms.

Laboratory results

Blood, respiratory and tissues samples were obtained from the 11 cases. Preliminary tests conducted at the local Public Health Laboratory were negative for respiratory viruses, and other viral, bacterial, and fungal agents. On 31 August, samples from the initial six cases were sent to the National Reference Laboratory – the Administration of National Laboratories and Health Institutes (Administración Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de Salud – ANLIS per its acronym in Spanish) – for additional testing 4 . As of 3 September 2022, negative results have been obtained for COVID-19 (RT-PCR), Influenza, detection of antibodies for Coxiella, urinary antigen for Legionella spp., panel of 12 respiratory viruses, hantavirus (Elisa IgM), histoplasma (RT-PCR), Yersinia pestis (PCR) and micro agglutination for leptospirosis.

Further analyses of two bronchoalveolar lavage samples by highly sensitive total DNA sequencing (metagenomics) found readings compatible with Legionella spp. On 3 September 2022, ANLIS reported that amplification products of the 16S ribosomal gene for Legionella spp. from the two samples of bronchoalveolar lavage sequenced by metagenomics and analyzed by four different bioinformatic methods, produced results compatible with Legionella pneumophila. Confirmation of these results is expected upon completion of the sequencing processes. This laboratory result supports evidence compatible with Legionnaires’ disease. Blood culture and seroconversion tests continue to be conducted to complement the diagnosis of Legionella infection.  

Epidemiology of Legionellosis

Legionellosis is a generic term describing the pneumonic and non-pneumonic forms of infection with the Legionella species of bacteria.Legionellosis varies in severity from mild to serious and can sometimes be fatal.

Legionnaires’ disease, the pneumonic form, has an incubation period of 2 to 10 days (but up to 16 days have been recorded in some outbreaks). It is an important cause of community- and hospital-acquired pneumonia; and although uncommon, Legionnaires may cause outbreaks of public health significance. Initially, symptoms are fever, mild cough, loss of appetite, headache, malaise and lethargy, with some patients also experiencing muscle pain, diarrhoea and confusion. The severity of Legionnaires’ disease ranges from a mild cough to rapidly fatal pneumonia. Untreated Legionnaires’ disease usually worsens during the first week.

Mortality from Legionnaires’ disease depends on the severity of the disease, the use of antibiotic treatment, the setting where Legionella was acquired, and whether the patient has underlying conditions, including immunosuppression. The death rate may be as high as 40–80% in untreated immunosuppressed patients and can be reduced to 5–30% through appropriate case management, depending on the severity of the clinical signs and symptoms. Overall, the death rate is usually between 5–10%.

Public health response

In response to the detection of the cluster of bilateral pneumonia, health authorities in Tucuman Province coordinated cluster investigation activities including the follow-up of cases, search for the source(s) of infection, active case finding to identify additional cases, and contact tracing. Preliminary investigations indicated no secondary cases were identified.

As Legionella spp. has been identified as the etiology of this outbreak, the following public health measures were implemented:

  • Risk assessment and suspension of healthcare activities in the health facility.
  • Enhanced surveillance including active and passive case finding.
  • Biological and environmental sampling, and laboratory testing, including bacteria isolation, and metagenomics.
  • Case isolation and clinical care of patients.
  • Contact identification, support and monitoring.
  • Risk communication

With the support of national health authorities, environmental samples are being collected to define the source of contamination and urgently implement prevention and control measures. The health authorities are also implementing internal and external communication strategies for health professionals and the community.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)/WHO is providing technical support for the outbreak investigation, including advice on sampling, environmental assessment, clinical management, and Infection and Prevention Control (IPC) measures. 

WHO risk assessment

Legionellosis varies in severity from a mild febrile illness to a serious and sometimes fatal form of pneumonia and is caused by exposure to Legionella species found in contaminated water and potting mixes. The most common form of transmission of Legionellosis is inhalation of contaminated aerosols from contaminated water sources. Sources that have been linked to both the transmission of Legionella via aerosols and outbreaks of Legionellosis include air conditioning cooling towers or evaporative condensers associated with air conditioning and industrial cooling, hot and cold water systems, humidifiers, and whirlpool spas. Infection can also occur by aspiration of contaminated water or ice, particularly in susceptible hospital patients. To date, there is no reported direct human-to-human transmission.

Sporadic outbreaks of legionellosis pneumonia have been reported in Argentina before. There are robust surveillance activities being implemented in the affected health facility. Nonetheless, in the absence of an identified source of Legionella bacteria, the risk of developing Legionellosis for people working or hospitalized at the same health facility is currently moderate.

Countries with cases of Legionellosis reported after travel to Argentina should notify their regional IHR focal point.

WHO advice

WHO recommends the continuation of laboratory analyses, case identification and clinical care, contact tracing, outbreak investigation to identify the source(s), implementation of measures to prevent further infections and enhancement of Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) measures. IPC measures in health facilities have been enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic and should be reinforced to prevent healthcare-associated transmission.  Precautions that are recommended for COVID-19 should continue to be followed.

WHO does not recommend any specific different measures for travelers. In case of symptoms suggestive of respiratory illness either during or after travel, travelers are encouraged to seek medical attention and share their travel history with their healthcare provider.

WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on Argentina based on the current information available on this event.

A giant meteorite has just been unearthed in Argentina

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A 30,800-kilogram meteorite has been unearthed in Argentina over the weekend, and experts have declared it to be one of the largest meteorites ever found on Earth.

The discovery, made on the border of Chaco, about 1,078 km (670 miles) northwest of the Buenos Aires, has been attributed to a meteor shower that hit the region more than 4,000 years ago.

Weighing in at more than 30 tons, the find has been controversially named the second largest meteorite on Earth, but until further tests are completed, it’s too soon to give away that title just yet.

The undisputed king of Earth-based meteorites is a 66-ton whopper called Hoba, excavated in Namibia nearly a century ago.

While the Hoba meteorite has been fully uncovered from its resting place in the Otjozondjupa Region of Namibia, due to its size, it has never been removed.


It’s thought to have slammed into Earth some 80,000 years ago, and its age has been estimated to be between 190 million and 410 million years.

The rival contender for the second spot is El Chaco – a 37-ton meteorite discovered in the same Argentinian field as this new find.

Now experts will need to perform additional weigh-ins to see if this new Argentinian meteorite, called Gancedo, can beat that and secure the title below Hoba.

“While we hoped for weights above what had been registered, we did not expect it to exceed 30 tons,” Mario Vesconi, president of the Astronomy Association of Chaco, told the Xinhua news agency over the weekend. “[T]he size and weight surprised us.”

The meteorite was uncovered in Campo del Cielo (meaning “Field of Heaven”), an area on the border between the provinces of Chaco and Santiago del Estero.

This surreal place is blistered with meteorite craters – at least 26 cover an area of just 3 km by 19.2 km (1.8 x 11.9 miles), the largest measuring 115 by 91 metres (377 x 298 feet), thought to have been impacted by a powerful meteor shower between 4,200 and 4,700 years ago.

An estimated 100 tons of space debris have been excavated from the site so far.

The new Gancedo meteorite will now undergo a number of tests, firstly to confirm its weight, and secondly to confirm its status as an actual meteorite.

“We could compare the weight with the other large meteorite found in the province. Although we expected it to be heavier, we did not expect it to exceed 30 tons,” Vesconi told the Argentinian government’s news service, Télam.

“We will weigh it again. Apart from wanting the added confidence of a double-check of the initial readings we took, the fact that its weight is such a surprise to us makes us want to recalibrate.”

A Mystery Rotating Island ‘The Eye’ Spotted in Argentina

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There is an unusual floating island in Argentina that a group of scientists and filmmakers are hoping to explore further with the help of a Kickstarter campaign.

In a video on the project’s fundraising page, producer/director Sergio Neuspiller explains that his team discovered the island while location scouting for a sci-fi horror film. He describes the area they are calling The Eye as “a circle of land surrounded by a thin channel of water with an external diameter of 130 yards.”

They began to suspect that it may not be a natural formation based on the seemingly perfect shape of its inner and outer circles as well as images of the central area shifting over time.

After one failed expedition, some of them eventually reached the island and discovered unusually clear water, firm terrain, and a floating land mass.  The trip raised more questions, and they are hoping to raise $50,000 on Kickstarter to explore the island with a team of scientists and high-tech devices. The campaign is scheduled to run until October 10th.

To see “The Eye,” on google maps, plug in the coordinates 34°15’07.8″S 58°49’47.4″W.

‘Pre-historic’ animal shell found in Argentina

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A glyptodont shell found in Carlos Spegazzini, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina on December 29, 2015
A glyptodont shell found in Carlos Spegazzini, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina on December 29, 2015

A passer-by on Christmas Day found a meter-long shell on a riverbank in Argentina which may be from a glyptodont, a prehistoric kind of giant armadillo, experts said Tuesday.

A local man thought the black scaly shell was a when he saw it lying in the mud, his wife Reina Coronel told AFP.

Her husband Jose Antonio Nievas found the shell beside a stream at their farm in Carlos Spegazzini, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the capital Buenos Aires.

“My husband went out to the car and when he came back he said, ‘Hey, I just found an egg that looks like it came from a dinosaur,” she said.

“We all laughed because we thought it was a joke.”

Nievas told television channel Todo Noticias he found the shell partly covered in mud and started to dig around it.

Various experts who saw television pictures of the object said it was likely to be a glyptodont .

“There is no doubt that it looks like a glyptodont,” said paleontologist Alejandro Kramarz of the Bernadino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum.

“The animal became extinct thousands of years ago and it is very common to find their fossils in this region,” he told AFP.

Glyptodonts are the ancestors of modern armadillos. They had big round armored shells and weighed up to a ton.

They lived in South America for tens of millions of years.

Kramarz estimated the specimen found by Nievas was relatively young at 10,000 years.

Are Monsanto Pesticides To Blame For Birth Defects In Argentina?

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Argentina has become one of the worlds largest soybean producers, with the majority of its soybeans bearing GM glyphosate resistance. Agrochemical spraying in the country has mushroomed over the last several years, in 1990 roughly 9 million gallons of argochemical spraying was needed, compared to today’s requirement of roughly 84 milliongallons.

argentina

Included in that was the use of over 200 million liters (52,834 million gallons) of herbicides such as glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup. The country’s entire soybean crop, along with nearly all of its cotton and corn crops, have been genetically modified over the last decade. The GM use has been primarily from crops designed to resist Roundup, which is sprayed onto the fields so only resistant crops grow.

Along with the increase in pesticide use, the country has seen a disturbing and alarming growth in the prevalence of birth defects, cancer rates, and other negative health ailments. This has lead many of its citizens, including medical professionals, to assert the notion that pesticides, GMOs, and biotech giants are the ones to blame.

Two year old Camila Veron [pictured above], was born with multiple organ problems and severely disabled, the doctors had told her family that the agrochemicals might have been to blame. And dozens of other similar cases have been witnessed in the area. It is firmly believed that the herbicide used on the genetically modified crops, may over an extended period of time after consumption, cause brain, intestinal, and heart defects in fetuses. In Ituzaingo, a district comprised of roughly 5,000 people [and surrounded by many soy fields] has seen over the past eight years, more than 300 documented cases of cancer associated with fumigations and pesticides have been experienced, they have reported cancer rates that are 41 times the national average.

Sergio H. Lence, "The Agricultural Sector in Argentina: Major Trends and Recent Developmebts," 2010Monsanto has [unsurprisingly] denied the claims that their products has contributed in any way to the increased occurrence of experienced birth defects in the nation. Even though dozens of cases have been exposed which illustrate the misuse and illegality of pesticide application, pesticides are showing up in alarming rates in the soil and drinking water. Disturbingly, 80% of children surveyed in one area were found to have pesticides in their blood. Studies have demonstrated that low concentrations of pesticides [such as glyphosate] is understood to harm human cells and cause cancer.

Ironically for those claiming that this is Monsanto’s fault, the pesticides found in human blood at higher quantities were organochlorines… which has nothing to do with glyphosate.

Unfortunately for the Argentina, the Associated Press has documented numerous cases within the country where poisons are being, and have been, applied in ways which are prohibited by existing law, or unanticipated by regulatory science. The blame does not rest solely, or even primarily, on Monsanto, but with the farmers’ misuse posing the primary problem.

Medical professionals in the area have also been advising their clients that pesticide application within the country may be to blame. It is important to remember that Glyphosate is not the most toxic pesticide being used, and that genetic modification itself is surely not to blame.

Read more: http://www.exposingtruth.com/monsanto-pesticides-blame-birth-defects-argentina/#ixzz3WDjEImMC
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Monsanto Pesticides To Blame For Birth Defects In Argentina.

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Argentina has become one of the worlds largest soybean producers, with the majority of its crops being majorly composed of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Agrochemical spraying in the country has mushroomed over the last several years, in 1990 roughly 9 million gallons of argochemical spraying was needed, compared to today’s requirement of roughly 84 million gallons. Included in that was the use of over 200 million liters of herbicides containing poisons such as glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup. The country’s entire soybean crop, along with nearly all of its cotton and corn crops, have become genetically modified over the last decade. Along with the increase in GMO crops and pesticide use, the country has seen a disturbing and alarming growth in the prevalence of birth defects, cancer rates, and other negative health ailments. This has lead many of its citizens, including medical professionals, to assert the notion that pesticides, GMOs, and biotech giants are the ones to blame.

argentina

Two year old Camila Veron [pictured above], was born with multiple organ problems and severely disabled, the doctors had told her family that the agrochemicals might have been to blame. And dozens of other similar cases have been witnessed in the area. It is firmly believed that the herbicide used on the genetically modified crops, may over an extended period of time after consumption, cause brain, intestinal, and heart defects in fetuses. In Ituzaingo, a district comprised of roughly 5,000 people [and surrounded by many soy fields] has seen over the past eight years, more than 300 documented cases of cancer associated with fumigations and pesticides have been experienced, they have reported cancer rates that are 41 times the national average.

Sergio H. Lence, "The Agricultural Sector in Argentina: Major Trends and Recent Developmebts," 2010Monsanto has [unsurprisingly] denied the claims that their GMOs have contributed in any way to the increased occurrence of experienced birth defects in the nation. Even though dozens of cases have been exposed which illustrate the misuse and illegality of pesticide application, pesticides are showing up in alarming rates in the soil and drinking water. Disturbingly, 80% of children surveyed in one area were found to have pesticides in their blood. Studies have demonstrated that low concentrations of pesticides [such as glyphosate] is understood to harm human cells and cause cancer.

Unfortunately for the Monsanto public relations department, the Associated Press has documented numerous cases within the country where poisons are being, and have been, applied in ways which are prohibited by existing law, or unanticipated by regulatory science. Medical professionals in the area have also been advising their clients that pesticide application within the country may be to blame. Not only is the rise of Roundup-saturated crops a potential health risk to residents of the area, but it’s a danger to the environment, and other animals that will eat these crops. In the ongoing battle against genetically modified foods and biotech [government-protected] corporate giants like Monsanto, it is crucial to remember that genetically engineered foods have never been proven safe for consumption over an extended period of time. One only hopes that corporations such as Monsanto, who destroy lives and communities, be held responsible for their carelessly negligible actions.