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The World Health Organization has asked China for information on a rise in respiratory illness among children, in a sign of the heightened vigilance over outbreaks of infectious disease since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The global health body made the request after reports of “undiagnosed pneumonia” in northern China from ProMed, the outbreak surveillance network that first alerted the world to Covid.
China’s National Health Commission said on Thursday it was “paying close attention” to the overcrowding in children’s hospitals and recommended that patients with milder symptoms go to general hospitals and clinics instead.
The Capital Institute of Pediatrics, one of Beijing’s main children’s hospitals, was full of parents and sick children when the Financial Times visited on Thursday.
China’s health commission this month reported an increase in respiratory disease cases. It attributed these to a rise in infections involving pathogens including influenza, mycoplasma pneumoniae — a common bacterial infection that typically affects younger children — and Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid.
The WHO’s data request, made under the International Health Regulations mechanism, reflects a focus on prompt investigation of possible respiratory illness surges after Covid spread from China in late 2019 to cause a global health crisis. The health body declared an international public health emergency at the end of January 2020 and a pandemic two months later.
The UN health agency said it was unclear whether the latest reported problems in children were associated with an overall increase in respiratory infections cited by the Chinese authorities or separate events.
The WHO had requested additional epidemiologic and clinical information, as well as laboratory results from the reported clusters among children, the body said late on Wednesday. It has also asked for data on trends in the circulation of known respiratory illness pathogens, as well as making contact with clinicians and scientists.
Some western health experts linked the outbreaks to China’s stringent pandemic lockdown and said other countries experienced big waves of respiratory infections in children during their first winter after pandemic restrictions had been lifted.
“Their lengthy lockdown must have drastically reduced the circulation of respiratory bugs,” said François Balloux, director of the University College London Genetics Institute. “Unless new evidence emerges, there is no reason to suspect the emergence of a novel pathogen.”
At Beijing’s Capital Institute of Pediatrics, Cao, the parent of a seven-year-old girl, said it took four hours for her daughter, who was diagnosed with mycoplasma pneumoniae, to go through the hospital’s procedures before receiving treatment, even though they had made an appointment online in advance.
“Today is not too bad,” Cao added. “Weekends and Monday were busier.” Her family has been coming to the facility since last week.
Shi, a mother of two, said people had been waiting all night in the emergency room and were only seen the following morning. “My daughter’s class has around 20 kids calling in sick,” Shi said, adding there were about 50 children in the class.
Mycoplasma pneumoniae was difficult to diagnose and cure, parents told the FT. Cao brought her child to the hospital because the antibiotic prescribed by the last clinic to treat the bacterial infection had not reduced the fever.
Her daughter tested positive for mycoplasma using a throat swab on the sixth day after displaying symptoms but was only diagnosed with pneumonia after a CT scan.
On Tuesday, Wang Quanyi, chief epidemiologist at Beijing Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told state media that the three leading causes of respiratory infections in the city were influenza, adenovirus and respiratory syncytial virus, with mycoplasma pneumoniae fourth.
Additional reporting by William Langley
