A number of American government personnel working in China have been sent back to the United States for screening after they suffered unexplained health issues similar to those that have hurt U.S. workers in Cuba, the State Department said on Wednesday.
A medical team was sent by the State Department to Guangzhou, in southern China, to conduct screenings of all U.S. government employees and family members who asked for them, in case they were the targets of “sonic attacks.”
“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,” the department’s spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
Last month, an employee complained of an “abnormal sensations of sound and pressure” which was cause for the screenings. On Thursday, the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou issued its second health notice on the issue, saying it did not know what had caused the symptoms but that it was taking the incident seriously.
According to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, China was not notified by the U.S. of the new cases. However, she pointed out that they will look into the incident. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in May that his country had been investigating the issue but hadn’t found the source of the “sonic influence” and added that he hoped this “individual case” would not be “magnified, complicated or even politicized.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday that a task force was being formed in response to “unexplained health incidents” U.S. diplomats had been affected by. Some officials compared these incidents to those in Cuba in 2016 and 2017, all of which were preceded by some sort of “acoustic element” like a “high-pitched beam of sound.”
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