Devanjana Mukherjee, Khabri Media
Government has advised individuals to adopt preventive measures like staying at home when feeling ill, practicing regular hand-washing, and appropriately using masks.
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China, still reeling from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, now faces a new threat: a mysterious pneumonia outbreak sweeping through schools. This alarming situation, reminiscent of the early days of the COVID crisis, has led to a surge in hospitalizations, casting an ominous shadow over the country’s healthcare system. To subscribe please click tau.id/2iy6f and access our live channel.
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The outbreak, which has led to a significant number of cases among children, has caught the attention of World Health Organization (WHO), which has asked for additional information from China on the respiratory illness spreading so rapidly in the northern part of the country. It has also sought advanced and enhanced response measure.
Hospitals in Beijing and Liaoning, 500 miles northeast, are struggling to cope with an influx of sick children, straining their resources to the breaking point. Local media reports suggest that school closures are imminent due to the outbreak.
The affected children present with unusual symptoms, including lung inflammation and high fever, but noticeably lack the typical cough and other signs associated with flu, RSV, and other respiratory illnesses. However, it is too early to project whether it is next influenza based pandemic or not.
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ProMed, an open-access surveillance platform that tracks worldwide disease outbreaks in humans and animals, issued an alert on Tuesday evening regarding an emerging epidemic of “undiagnosed pneumonia” particularly affecting children.
This is the same platform that issued alert in late December 2019 served as a critical early warning about a novel virus, subsequently identified as SARS-CoV-2, alerting a wide range of medical professionals and scientists, including high-ranking officials at the World Health Organization.
Although the cause of this trend is unclear, some health experts are attributing it to a common and temporary aftereffect of lifting lockdown restrictions, even as unanswered questions around the infections and the country of their spread have led others to draw parallels with the early days of the pandemic.
In an editor’s note, ProMed said: “This report suggests a widespread outbreak of an undiagnosed respiratory illness… It is not at all clear when this outbreak started, as it would be unusual for so many children to be affected so quickly. The report does not say that any adults were affected, suggesting some exposure at the schools.”
The official figures on the number of cases are not available yet, hospitals in Beijing have witnessed a surge in patients, especially in the children’s wards. “One major hospital in the city has reported that on average every day, they are seeing about 1,200 patients enter their emergency room,”
Health officials are also worried that winter will exacerbate the spread of the infections after a warning from China’s national weather authority that, starting on Thursday, the country’s cold temperatures will plunge even further.
According to Laith Abu-Raddad, professor of healthcare policy and research at Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar, While the presence of a novel pathogen is a possibility until more information is made available, the outbreak could also be due to “an existing but newly mutated pathogen with modified characteristics and severity.”
