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An outbreak of pneumonia that’s tearing through schools in China and leaving hospitals overwhelmed is raising concerns among global health experts.
In scenes eerily similar to those seen at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, reports are emerging from the country about massive queues of patients waiting to be seen.
And the warning system that raised the alert this week was among the first to spot Covid when it began to circulate in Wuhan back in 2019.
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The system, called ProMED, issued its warning on Tuesday amid reports that hospitals in the capital Beijing were struggling to cope with admissions. There was a similar story hundreds of miles away in Liaoning.
The World Health Organisation has made an official request for information from China about “an increase in respiratory illnesses and reported clusters of pneumonia in children”. It urged people in the country to take measures to spread the disease from spreading, including wearing masks and getting jabs.
Reports of the chaos in hospitals was initially reported only by non-state media, with the Chinese government remaining mum, but the WHO’s intervention prompted the state-run Xinhua news agency to publish an article in which officials confirmed they were paying close attention to the situation.
In the United States, Dr Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Centre at Brown University School of Public Health, told Mail Online that she was concerned by the developments.
“Seeing an increased number of people presenting at any hospital is, of course, alarming,” she said. “It may not be out of the ordinary… but any time we see people going to the hospital, we have reason to be concerned about it.”
Radio Free Asia is reporting that the Beijing Centre for Disease Control and Prevention had seen more than 3,500 cases of “respiratory infection” at the city’s main children’s hospital as long ago as the start of last month.
Meanwhile, FTV News in Taiwan said hospitals were being “overwhelmed” – and in another worrying similarity with the early days of the Covid outbreak, it said that parents were accusing the authorities of covering up the scope of the outbreak.
A member of staff at the Beijing Friendship Hospital said the demand from patients was so great that there was a 24-hour wait to be seen in A&E.
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- World Health Organisation
- China
- United States
- Coronavirus
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