After the reputed medical journal, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine chose to publish a letter by Chavda et al., on August 17, the Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (HFMD) outbreak in Kerala gained international traction that "a new virus known as tomato flu, or tomato fever, has emerged in India in the State of Kerala". However, now the incident is making headlines again because on September 13, another reputed medical journal, i.e., the British Medical Journal (BMJ), reported that The Lancet refused to publish a letter by doctors from Kerala, requesting the editorial board "to retract this unscientific article at the earliest with a proper clarification to its audience."

Dr. R. Aravind, the Head of Infectious Diseases at Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, stated that on August 28, he, along with two other doctors, Dr. Tony Lawrence, and Dr. Mariyam Alex, had written to The Lancet clearly explaining the reasons why the article was misleading. He added that "tomato fever" is nothing but HFMD and that it is neither a new virus nor a rare disease, and that it did not originate in Kerala, as the authors have stated in the article. On September 6, they received correspondence from the Editor of Lancet Respiratory Medicine, who rejected their letter. He explained that they wrote to The Lancet because that article was quite damaging for Kerala. He further added that the samples of "tomato fever" had already been profiled by the Institute of Advanced Virology (IAV) in Thiruvananthapuram as Coxsackie viruses A.6 and A.16, which are very well known to cause HFMD in Kerala as well as other states.

The article by Chavda et al. noted that "Tomato flu could be an after-effect of chikungunya or dengue fever in children rather than a viral infection". But, in the same breath, it also added that "the virus could also be a new variant of the viral hand, foot, and mouth disease, a common infectious disease targeting mostly children aged 1–5 years". The letter concluded that the article had become a source of a media sensation, medical misinformation, and unnecessary alarm in India.

In the letter published by the BMJ, they quoted a statement from the Lancet Group stating, "Scientific discussion and debate are an important part of the scientific process, and the Lancet’s journals welcome responses from readers and the wider scientific community to content we have published. We have shared the questions raised by this published correspondence with the authors to ensure any decisions made are evidence-based and factually accurate. We will continue to monitor the situation closely.