BEIJING: An American citizen working at the US consulate in the southernChinese city of Guangzhou has reported suffering from “abnormal” sounds andpressure leading to a mild brain injury, the US embassy said on Wednesday.
The embassy, which issued a health alert to Americans living in China, saidit could not link the case to health issues suffered by US government staffin Cuba dating back to late 2016.
The unnamed American citizen assigned to the consulate in Guangzhou hadreported a variety of “physical symptoms” dating from late 2017 to Aprilthis year, the US embassy in Beijing said in an email.
The worker was sent to the United States for further evaluation. “Theclinical findings of this evaluation matched mild traumatic brain injury(MTBI),” the embassy said.
The State Department was taking the incident very seriously and working todetermine the cause and impact, the embassy said.
It added the Chinese government told the embassy it is also investigatingand taking appropriate measures.
“We cannot at this time connect it with what happened in Havana, but we areinvestigating all possibilities,” a US embassy official told Reuters.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request forcomment.
The US government on Wednesday issued a health alert to Americans in China,warning them about the incident it described as “subtle and vague, butabnormal, sensations of sound and pressure”.
“While in China, if you experience any unusual acute auditory or sensoryphenomena accompanied by unusual sounds or piercing noises, do not attemptto locate their source. Instead, move to a location where the sounds arenot present,” the emailed alert said.
The US government in October expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the UnitedStates for what it said was Cuba’s failure to protect staff at the USembassy in Havana from mysterious health incidents at one point thought topossibly have been acoustic “attacks”.
Staff there reported symptoms including hearing loss, dizziness, fatigueand cognitive issues, though Cuban officials dismissed the idea of acousticstrikes as “science fiction” and accused Washington of slander.
The cause of those incidents remains unresolved.
The Canadian government in April said it would remove families of diplomatsposted to Cuba after Canadian personnel there in 2017 also reported similarhealth symptoms.