“It took us two or three hours to see the doctor, whereas normally the wait time is only half an hour,” said Emma Wang, 39, whose 7-year-old daughter had mycoplasma pneumonia. The Beijing hospital where they went was “very crowded,” she said, and she knew four or five other families in the same position.
Stories like hers pushed the World Health Organization to act. On Wednesday the agency asked China for detailed information about a rise in respiratory illness and reported clusters of pneumonia in children in the north of the country. It wanted patient lab results and details of the strain on the health system, along with lab samples.
What set off the alarm
ProMED, the public disease-reporting system, had issued an alert on Tuesday saying hospitals in Beijing and elsewhere were “overwhelmed with sick children” and describing an outbreak of “undiagnosed pneumonia.” China’s National Health Commission had already raised the surge at a press conference the week before. Officials there blamed overlapping circulation of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and the virus that causes Covid-19, and said the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions was part of the reason. They also pointed to a jump in mycoplasma pneumonia, a common bacterial infection that mostly hits young children.
When NBC News visited Beijing Children’s Hospital on Thursday, long lines of people were waiting to register. Waiting rooms were packed with parents and children, some of them on IV drips. Posts from hospital visitors on social media showed long queues and high ticket numbers, and some people said they were sent home to return the next day. In Liaoning province, the Dalian Children’s Hospital was reported to be swamped.
The WHO’s reading of the data
The WHO said northern China had reported more respiratory disease since mid-October than in the same period of the previous three years. It said the rise came earlier in the season but was “not unexpected given the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, as similarly experienced in other countries.” Chinese authorities had not detected new or unusual pathogens, according to the agency, and patient numbers had not passed hospital capacity. It saw no sign of a global threat and advised against travel restrictions.
China is in its first full flu season since it lifted some of the world’s toughest Covid-19 controls late last year. Australia and New Zealand, which also had “zero-Covid” rules, saw similar surges after dropping them, and the United States had a “tripledemic” of respiratory viruses last year.
Jin Dong-yan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said the same thing was probably happening in China. “We don’t think there is a major issue there or there is some unknown disease or something that is hidden,” he told NBC News. “We have no evidence for that.” Mycoplasma pneumonia, he said, “is not like Covid, it’s not like flu, and there are very effective antibiotics.” He also said Beijing had released little data, and he wanted the public told whether infection rates were very high everywhere or in just one place.
Experts split on transparency
Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy told Fortune that a new pathogen would be “showing up in kids and adults equally.” Stuart Ray of Johns Hopkins called the outbreak “concerning” but said it was “not so out of the ordinary that we should presume this is due to a new pathogen.” Amesh Adalja, also of Johns Hopkins, pointed to China’s “historical lack of transparency” and said a mix of respiratory pathogens driving the clusters would not be surprising.
Both China and the WHO were criticised over how they handled early reporting on Covid-19, first detected in Wuhan in late 2019.
Parents were also anxious. Zhang Li, a doctor in Dalian whose 14-year-old daughter had just recovered from mycoplasma pneumonia, said parents grow worried “if their children don’t get better after one or two days.” The National Health Commission told Xinhua that families of children with mild cases should stay away from hospitals because of long waits and the risk of cross-infection. The WHO urged people in China to get recommended vaccinations, keep rooms ventilated, wear masks when needed and wash their hands.
Sources
- 2023 Chinese pneumonia outbreak – Wikipedia
- Chinese hospitals ‘overwhelmed with sick children’ after surge in respiratory illness
- WHO asks China for data as mystery pneumonia cluster outbreak overwhelms hospitals
