HWN Suggests

Chinese Hospitals Are Housing Another Deadly Outbreak

In Beijing and other megacities in China, hospitals are overflowing with children suffering pneumonia or similar severe ailments. However, the Chinese government claims that no new pathogen has been found and that the surge in chest infections is due simply to the usual winter coughs and colds, aggravated by the lifting of stringent COVID-19 restrictions in December 2022. The World Health Organization (WHO) has dutifully repeated this reassurance, as if it learned nothing from Beijing’s disastrous cover-up of the COVID-19 outbreak.

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Articles of Interest

China pneumonia: Everything we know about new outbreak of respiratory illness

Reports from local media say children's hospitals are "overwhelmed" with sick children, but Chinese authorities say a surge in sickness is a result of known illnesses circulating more widely after COVID restrictions lifted. Here is what we know so far.

Could China’s Child Pneumonia Outbreak Spread? All You Need to Know

China’s health-care system is once again in the spotlight as a wave of pneumonia cases sweeps through the country, hitting kids particularly hard. The sudden increase in sick children, and a report suggesting widespread clusters of undiagnosed respiratory illnesses, prompted the World Health Organization to ask for more details in order to allay concerns that a novel pathogen — something like Covid-19 — was the source of the outbreaks. So far, Chinese officials say, it’s simply a laundry list of known germs that’s causing the problem.

How worried should we be about the pneumonia outbreak in China?

Reports of a surge in pneumonia-like illness primarily affecting children in northern China have captured our attention. The last time we heard about a mysterious respiratory outbreak leading to overcrowding in hospitals was the beginning of the COVID pandemic, so it’s not entirely surprising this has caused some alarm.

Pneumonia outbreak in Chinese kids linked to known pathogens

The surge in respiratory infections in young children in northern China is being driven primarily by known viral and bacterial infections and not by a novel pathogen, the World Health Organization (WHO) said late last week in an update.

What’s behind China’s mysterious wave of childhood pneumonia?

Scientists expected a surge in respiratory disease, but what is happening in China is unusual.

Resources

5 questions about the latest disease outbreak in China

The wave of respiratory diseases hitting China is more likely the return of seasonal illness the country suppressed with prolonged Covid lockdowns than another pandemic threat.