Amid the fourth wave of the noble coronavirus disease, doctors in India warned about a new illness gaining momentum in the country. Commonly known as, Tomato Flu, the disease primarily occurs in the hand, foot, and mouth.
According to the popular medical journal ‘Lancet’ the disease was first found in the southern state of Kerala’s Kollam district on May 6. The new disease, as per reports published in the journal, has so far infected 82 children across several regions of Kerala, including, Anchal, Aryankavu, and Neduvathur, of which kids most are below the age of five. The disease has also triggered a state of alert in the neighboring states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
The Regional Medical Research Centre in Odisha’s Bhubaneswar additionally, on the other hand, reported of 26 children between the age of 1 to 9 getting affected by the said disease. Apart from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha, as per the Lancet’s report, so far, no other region of the country has been affected by the disease.
Infectious in nature, intestinal viruses have been cited as the disease’s main cause by doctors, it is also being said that the disease is rare in adults because of a strong immune system that is capable of fighting it back.
The disease has been titled ‘Tomato Flu’ because of the red painful blisters that appear on the patient’s body and gradually enlarge to the size of a tomato.
While high fever, body ache, joint swelling, and fatigue are the few initial symptoms of the disease, few patients, however, have also complained of nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, dehydration, swollen joints, and body aches.
Doctors have warned the disease of being very contagious and say that it is a self-limiting disease. The disease so far has no specific drug to cure it.
