- Hospitals in Beijing and Liaoning are ‘overwhelmed with sick children’
- Students and teachers have been struck down, with some classes canceled
- The scenario is eerily similar to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic
A puzzling pneumonia outbreak is said to be spreading rapidly through schools in China. Local news reports reveal that hospitals in Beijing and Liaoning, located 500 miles northeast, are grappling with an overwhelming number of sick children.
As a result, school classes are on the brink of suspension. The affected children are displaying uncommon symptoms such as lung inflammation and high fever, but no cough or other typical signs associated with flu, RSV, and other respiratory illnesses.
On Tuesday, a late-night alert was disseminated via ProMed, a widely accessible global surveillance system specializing in monitoring infectious diseases. It’s worth noting that back in December 2019, a ProMed notification initially brought a mysterious virus, later identified as Covid, to the attention of numerous medical professionals, scientists, and officials at the World Health Organization.
The Taiwanese outlet FTV News serves as the source for this alert, and it reported that concerned parents are questioning whether the authorities are concealing the severity of the epidemic.
China faced substantial criticism for concealing the original SARS epidemic in 2003 and the Covid pandemic in late 2019, both of which involved novel viruses causing pneumonia.
However, this new outbreak may potentially be linked to Mycoplasma pneumoniae, colloquially known as walking pneumonia, which is reportedly gaining prevalence in China as the country navigates its first winter without strict Covid lockdown measures in place.
