China Struggling To Cope With Surge of Child Respiratory Illnesses

Written by Dorothy Li on December 5, 2023. Posted in Current News

China’s top health body urged hospitals nationwide to extend service hours and set up more clinics amid the recent increase in infections

Health officials on Nov. 26 acknowledged that hospitals are overcrowded, and to quell public concerns, they urged local clinics to enhance their capacity to accommodate the growing number of patients.

“It is necessary to do a good job in epidemic prevention and control in key crowded places such as schools, child care institutions, and nursing homes, and to reduce the flow of people and visits.”

The health ministry reiterated the previous response to the World Health Organization (WHO), attributing the recent spike in acute respiratory cases to a combination of pathogens, most prominently influenza.

Wang Huaqing, the chief expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization program, listed other pathogens behind the rise in cases among the 5-to-14 age group, including the rhinovirus, a typical cause of the common cold, and mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterial infection that usually affects younger children.

The surge in infections is straining the country’s health system. In Tianjin, medical staff at Tianjin Children’s Hospital’s outpatient and emergency departments reportedly handle 10,000 to 12,000 visits daily.

At the same time, Hongqiao Hospital has summoned some retired pediatric doctors to return to work to deal with the surge in cases, according to a Nov. 18 report by Enorth, a local media outlet backed by the municipal government.

The regime’s claim that mycoplasma pneumoniae was behind the recent spike has already met with skepticism, with residents saying that they tested negative for mycoplasma.

“I suspect that this is not mycoplasma pneumonia because I have tried all kinds of drugs that are used to treat mycoplasma pneumonia, but none of them works,” a pediatric doctor in Beijing who was infected and asked to be referred to as Wang Hua, told The Epoch Times earlier this month.

They suggested the Chinese Communist Party directed its officials and media to attribute the outbreak to other pathogens, such as mycoplasma pneumonia, instead of the coronavirus because the Party’s leader has declared victory in combating the pandemic.

“A key purpose was to identify whether there have been ‘clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia’ in Beijing and Liaoning as referred to in media reports,” the WHO said in the statement.

On Nov. 23, the WHO said it received the clinical information, laboratory results, and other data it requested. The United Nations health body said the data shared by China’s health authorities suggested that the spike in respiratory illnesses was linked to the regime’s retreat from the nearly three-year zero-COVID policy.

The Chinese communist regime has borne the brunt of global scrutiny in reporting outbreaks since 2003, when health experts accused Beijing of covering up the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, caused by a previously unknown virus believed to have emerged from the southern Guangdong Province before it spread to major Chinese cities and nearly 30 countries.

Since another virulent respiratory disease appeared in central Wuhan city in late 2019, health experts and officials worldwide have repeatedly questioned the accuracy of the country’s data.

Earlier this year, as a massive wave of COVID-19 overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes following the sudden lifting of pandemic restrictions, the WHO once again appealed for transparency, stating that China’s official tallies are underreporting the actual scale of the outbreak.

See more here theepochtimes

Header image: Jade Gao / AFP via Getty Images

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