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The World Health Organisation has made an official request to China for more detailed information about an outbreak of respiratory illness and reported clusters of pneumonia in children.
Chinese authorities from the National Health Commission held a press conference on November 13 to report an increase in the incidence of respiratory diseases in the country. British newspaper The Telegraph reports that Chinese hospitals have been “overwhelmed with sick children” by the outbreak of pneumonia across the country, including Beijing.
Earlier this week PROMed, a publicly available early warning surveillance system that monitors human and animal disease outbreaks worldwide, detailed a reported epidemic of “undiagnosed pneumonia” in children.
The World Health Organisation responded on Thursday, saying it wants additional epidemiologic and clinical information about these reported clusters among children.
Chinese authorities have attributed the increase in respiratory diseases in the country to the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, mycoplasma pneumoniae (a common bacterial infection that typically affects younger children), respiratory syncytial virus, and the virus that causes COVID-19.
“It is unclear if [the reported clusters] are associated with the overall increase in respiratory infections previously reported by Chinese authorities or separate events,” the WHO said.
Philip Britton, a paediatric infectious diseases physician with the University of Sydney, said health authorities in Australia were keeping a watching brief.
“At this point in time, there’s no clear evidence that it represents anything beyond a coming together of the usual childhood respiratory infectious diseases. We’ve seen the coming together of the epidemics of RSV, flu and other respiratory viruses in Australia in the last 12 to 18 months, after opening up from COVID lockdowns and suppression.”
He said “the most likely explanation” was that China, which had significant and prolonged lockdowns, was now experiencing that same overlap of diseases.
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