A CIA officer who was travelling to India this month with agency director William Burns had reported symptoms of Havana syndrome, a health condition that has affected several people in the United States, reported CNN and the New York Times on Monday. However, India has not yet reported any case of Havana syndrome.

The victim, whose identity has not been identified, was to receive medical attention for some unknown condition whose symptoms were consistent with Havana syndrome, CNN reported citing unknown sources.

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Havana syndrome is a medical condition that causes symptoms like migraines, nausea, memory lapses, dizziness and brain tissue damage similar to a bomb blast. It has been named so as several US and Canadian officials placed in the Cuban started getting it in 2016.

About the incident,  an intelligence spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters that the agency does not comment on specific incidents or officers.

“We have protocols in place for when individuals report possible anomalous health incidents that include receiving appropriate medical treatment,” the spokesperson said.

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CIA director Burns in July said that he had appointed a senior agency official, who once led the hunt for America’s then most wanted enemy Osama bin Laden, to head a task force investigating the syndrome as the US believes it to be the targeted attack by Russia.

A US National Academy of Sciences panel after an investigation found that the most plausible theory can be that “directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy” is the cause of the syndrome.

Burns also said that there are strong chances that the Havana syndrome is intentionally caused and Russia‘s possible involvement in the act.

Havana Syndrome and Russian link

Initially, the United States’ officials deliberated that
sonic devices and weapons that use sound might be behind the syndrome, a theory
that was soon scrapped as sound waves at frequencies, which are beyond the range of human hearing are incapable of causing concussion-like conditions.

Then the country considered microwaves to be behind the syndrome. A report published in 2020 by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) noted that microwave beams could alter brain function without causing extensive structural damage explaining many of the symptoms.

In 2019, another report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reached similar findings. According to the NASEM report, Russia has worked with microwave technology since the 1950s; the Soviet Union used to blast them at the American embassy in Moscow and can be using the same to spread the symptoms.