A mysterious pneumonia is wreaking havoc in Chinese schools.
According to local news sources, hospitals in Beijing and Liaoning, 500 kilometers to the northeast, are among those “overwhelmed by young patients” and school courses are “on the verge of suspension”. The new reports were distributed by The Daily Mail.
Young people have atypical symptoms, such as lung inflammation and a high temperature, but no cough or other symptoms normally associated with flu, RSV and other respiratory infections.
ProMed, a massive, publicly accessible global surveillance system that tracks infectious diseases, issued the alarm on Tuesday afternoon.
Looking at this one up close…
Link: https://t.co/gxRuLe4y50 pic.twitter.com/WSm4W2wV1q
— Isaac Bogoch (@BogochIsaac) November 22
A ProMed warning in December 2019 brought a mysterious virus, eventually named Covid, to the attention of many doctors and scientists, including World Health Organization authorities.
The alarm was based on a story by Taiwanese news site FTV News, which also said “parents questioned whether the government was covering up the outbreak.”
China was widely criticized for failing to report the first SARS outbreak in 2003 and the Covid pandemic in late 2019, both caused by new viruses that cause pneumonia.
However, the latest outbreak could be linked to Mycoplasma pneumoniae, popularly known as walking pneumonia, which is said to be spreading in China as the nation enters its first winter without strict Covid lockdowns.
After pandemic restrictions were eased, infections such as RSV and influenza increased in the United States and the United Kingdom.
According to FTV News, Beijing Children’s Hospital was still packed Wednesday morning.
“The situation in Liaoning Province is also sad,” FTV News said.
The lobby of Dalian Children’s Hospital is reportedly filled with sick children receiving intravenous drips.
Patients also wait in long queues at the Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Central Hospital.
“Patients have to wait in line for two hours, and we are all in the emergency department and there are no general outpatients,” said an employee at Dalian Central Hospital.
Some school years have been canceled entirely. Not only are all the students sick, but the teachers have contracted pneumonia as well.
“Many, many are hospitalized,” Mr. Wei, a Beijing resident, told FTV News. They do not have symptoms and do not cough. They only have a high fever and many develop pulmonary nodules.”
According to the ProMed Editor’s Commentary, “This report shows a large outbreak of an undetected respiratory infection… It is not clear when this outbreak began, as such a large number of young people infected so quickly would be unprecedented .
“The study says no adults were affected, implying some exposure in schools.
“ProMed is looking forward to receiving more definitive information on the origin and extent of this alarming disease in China.”
Pneumonia is a potentially fatal disease that attacks one of the two lungs. The air sacs in the lungs can fill with fluid or pus.
Pneumonia itself is not contagious, but the respiratory viruses and bacteria that cause it are.
Walking pneumonia, which usually affects young children, causes a sore throat, fatigue and a cough that can last for months. Walking pneumonia is so called because the symptoms are usually mild enough for patients to continue walking.
In severe circumstances, the infection can develop into pneumonia.
Last month, local media reported that hospital-acquired infections were on the rise across China.
According to Zhou Huixia, head of the children’s medical center of the Seventh Medical Center of the PLA Chinese General Hospital, “this is the first wave of mycoplasma pneumoniae infections since most of the containment measures against Covid-19 were lifted in early this year.”
“The wave has seemed particularly fierce since the National Day holiday in early October. Compared to previous years, we have found more patients with mixed infections, drug resistance and lobar pneumonia,” he added.
Lobar pneumonia affects one or more regions of the lungs, known as lobes.
The number of infections is expected to peak in November, but concerns about drug resistance are growing.
Mycoplasma pneumoniae is increasingly resistant to macrolides, a type of antibiotic commonly used to treat pneumonia.
Research published in February last year found macrolide resistance in more than 80% of mycoplasma pneumoniae in Chinese babies hospitalized with the infection.
Walking pneumonia has killed very few young people so far.
Dr. Hua Shaodong of Beijing Children’s Hospital told China Daily, “There is a steady number of patients who develop severe cases, but there are very few critical cases and there have been no related deaths so far. The average days a [the] hospital for inpatients is about seven to 14 days.”
A ProMed “RFI” (request for information) posting, of the same type as the pneumonia alert, was the early warning of the Covid outbreak in Wuhan, China on December 30, 2019.
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