By Aastha Moghe
Since October 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been tracking Chinese medical surveillance systems data and has noticed a rise in respiratory distress patients, predominantly in children in the northern region of China.
China’s health commission held a press conference on 13th November to address the public concern. The commission accredited this increase to the cold season and the lifting of COVID restrictions due to the pathogens of influenza, SARS-Cov-2, and more. They stated that the outbreak in China is likely due to the sudden spread of the pathogens that were restricted during the COVID-19 restrictions.
This increase in respiratory diseases came in clusters near the northern part of China like Beijing and Liaoning which is why Beijing Children’s Hospital joined the Chinese Health Commission and WHO in their teleconference where the requested data for the reports of respiratory distress were provided, indicating an increase in outpatient consultations and hospital admissions of children due to Mycoplasma pneumonia since May, and RSV, adenovirus and influenza virus since October.
Most of these increases are earlier than the cold and flu season in China but were expected after the lifting of coved restrictions, as experienced by other countries restrictions were imposed by the Chinese medical authorities as no dangerous or new pathogens were found and all respiratory distress patients were suffering from general aforementioned pathogens.
In the early morning, the Beijing hospital was overcrowded with parents with their children seeking treatment. a Beijing citizen said "Many, many are hospitalized. They don't cough and have no symptoms. They just have a high temperature (fever) and many develop pulmonary nodules."
Another Beijing citizen: "Now you are not allowed to report to school. If you have any symptoms such as fever, cold, cough, and then you are hospitalized, you can ask for leave..."
The situation is not any better in the Liaoning province, the lobby of the Dalian Children’s Hospital was full of children receiving IV drips and staff have reported that: "Patients have to wait in line for 2 hours, and we are all in the emergency department and there are no general outpatient clinics."
Many schools have been shut down because not only the students but the teachers are sick
The Chinese authorities have advised to enhance in-patient and out-patient surveillance for respiratory distress patients with a spectrum of viruses and bacteria including, for the first time, mycoplasma pneumonia. They have also laid stress on the need to strengthen the healthcare system to handle the magnitude of patients. China also has surveillance systems to catch the trends of influenza or influenza-like illnesses, SARS-COV-2, pneumonia and RSV, etc. to platforms like the global influenza surveillance and response system which is led by the WHO and used for epidemiological and virologic surveillance around the world
It is too early to project whether this could be another pandemic but as virologists say: "The pandemic clock is ticking, we just do not know what time it is."
Beijing Children's hospital lobby full of pneumonia patients
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