Mark Lenzi (left), his wife (right) and their three-year-old son will be evacuated back to the US after falling sick with similar symptoms experienced by foreign service workers in Havana, Cuba
Multiple Americans have been evacuated from the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China, after experiencing the same symptoms suffered by workers in the US Embassy in Havana.
A new warning on the Embassy’s website urges Americans to watch out for symptoms including dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, fatigue, cognitive issues, visual problems, ear complaints and hearing loss, and difficulty sleeping.
The illness, which has led to some of the evacuated patients being diagnosed with a brain injury, is still unexplained. The government says it does not know what, or who, is causing the illness.
Mark Lenzi, a Foreign Service officer based in Guangzhou, told The Washington Post he, his wife and their three-year-old son were to be evacuated back to the US.
Lenzi began to experience symptoms in April last year. At first, he heard sounds he described as rolling marbles with static, and a few months later, he, his wife and child all began to suffer intense headaches.
Lenzi’s apartment was in one of several high-rise buildings in The Canton Place featuring restaurants and galleries spaced around a central plaza.
Another diplomat who reported symptoms was at a different upscale building near the consulate, the paper said.
Last month, Lenzi’s neighbor was evacuated, he said, and diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury.
Lenzi worked at the US Consulate in Guangzhou, and said his neighbor was evacuated last month and diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury. Several workers from Havana were diagnosed with the same thing after they were evacuated from their posts
Around the same time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Congress the symptoms experienced by staff in Guangzhou were medically similar to those experienced by staff in Cuba last year, in what the US Government has said were ‘targeted’ attacks.
After confirming one government employee had ‘suffered a medical incident’ in the southern Chinese city, the department deployed a team to screen employees and family members at its consulate there, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.
‘As a result of the screening process so far, the department has sent a number of individuals for further evaluation and a comprehensive assessment of their symptoms and findings in the United States,’ she said.
‘Medical professionals will continue to conduct full evaluations to determine the cause of the reported symptoms.’
In 2017, 24 U.S. government employees and family members in Cuba displayed the symptoms, which included hearing loss, dizziness, tinnitus, visual difficulties, headaches and fatigue.
Ten of those employees were diagnosed with ailments including ‘mild traumatic brain injury and permanent hearing loss, with such additional symptoms as loss of balance, severe headaches, cognitive disruption, and brain swelling,’ a statement from the American Foreign Service Association read.
Another two are currently undergoing medical evaluation, CBS reported on Friday.
Earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo established a task force to find out what was hurting the nation’s the foreign workers.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has established a task force to get to the bottom of what the mysterious illness and where it is coming from. The US Government has said they believe the injured Foreign Service workers in Cuba were targeted, but they do not know who is behind it
David Rank, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, told CBS any ‘implication or evidence that this was a state organized activity,’ would have a ‘much bigger impact on our relations.’
Republican Senator Mark Rubio said on Twitter he believed the attacks in Havana and China could be related.
‘When all is said and done the attacks in China will prove to be broader than initially suspected and potentially related to the attacks in Cuba,’ he wrote.
Chinese assistance in the investigation was requested, but officials said the nation had already conducted a thorough investigation last month that turned up no information.
Lenzi is reportedly accusing several State Department Officials to step down from their jobs and has accused them of masking what is really going on.