Respiratory illnesses cause havoc at China's hospitals

Publish date: 2024-08-31

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A worrying video has emerged showing a huge crowd of masked patients waiting to be treated inside a hospital in China amid growing concerns over a spike in mystery respiratory illnesses that have been hitting children especially hard.

The video was recently recorded inside one of Beijing’s medical centers, showing hundreds of adults and children crowding a sprawling waiting area.

Beijing health officials and the World Health Organization insisted that no new or unusual pathogens had been found in the pneumonia cases, which have been attributed to a rise in the number of children contracting viruses they had dodged during two years of draconian COVID restrictions, which only recently had been lifted.

Here is what we know about the mystery respiratory illness:

What is causing a spike in illnesses?

Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by a combination of known viruses such as the flu, rhinoviruses, the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the adenovirus as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, a spokesperson for China’s National Health Commission said.

The emergence of new flu strains or other viruses capable of triggering pandemics typically starts with undiagnosed clusters of respiratory illness. Both COVID-19 and SARS before it were first reported as unusual types of acute pneumonia.

Chinese authorities have blamed the uptick in respiratory conditions on the lifting of COVID lockdown restrictions. Other countries, including the US and UK, also saw spikes in illnesses when pandemic-related restraints ended a year ago.

Wu Zhiwei, director of the Center for Public Health Research at the Nanjing University Medical School, said some common respiratory infections, which typically occur in winter, had not hit China heavily during the pandemic, causing a low immunity against these infections.

Who raised alarm about pneumonia cases ?

The spike in respiratory diseases in China became a global issue last week when the World Health Organization took the rare step of publicly asking China for more information, citing a report on clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children by the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases.

“We asked about comparisons prior to the pandemic. And the waves that they’re seeing now, the peak is not as high as what they saw in 2018-2019,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, acting director of the WHO’s department of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention. “This is not an indication of a novel pathogen. This is expected. This is what most countries dealt with a year or two ago.”

China’s Communist government and the WHO have faced questions about the transparency of reporting early in the COVID pandemic, which emerged in the city of Wuhan in late 2019. The WHO reiterated Friday that no new or unusual pathogens had been found in the recent illnesses.

The WHO said Chinese health officials provided the information it requested, including data reflecting an increase in hospital admissions of children driven by bacterial infection, RSV, influenza and common cold viruses since October.

What is China doing?

Chinese health officials urged local authorities to open more fever clinics and promote vaccinations, as hospitals were warning of long lines in Beijing and Liaoning province in the north, where cases among children appear to be especially high.

China’s health ministry advised people to wear masks and called on local authorities to focus on preventing the spread of illnesses in crowded places such as schools and nursing homes.

Parents were being asked to avoid taking children with less severe symptoms to hospitals in northern China, according to local reports.

However, officials insisted that the spike in cases had not overloaded China’s hospitals, WHO said, despite the spread of videos showing medical centers swamped with patients.

What happens next?

New cases of respiratory illnesses could peak in the next couple of weeks, according to Li Tongzeng, the chief physician at the infectious diseases department at Beijing You’an Hospital.

A second wave of cases could spike during the New Year holidays, raising the risk of infections among vulnerable elderly people during family celebrations.

With Post wires