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.
“It is unclear if [the reported clusters] are associated with the overall increase in respiratory infections previously reported by Chinese authorities or separate events,” 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,” he said.
“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.
“However, given our experience with COVID from late 2019 and early 2020, we’re all maintaining a close watching brief on this and trying to get as much information from people on the ground as we possibly can,” Britton said.
“When [these outbreaks] come to our attention, we note them, follow up, do risk assessments. The Australian population should be confident that the right people are watching these things. Were there to be significant or meaningful risks to the Australian population, that would be brought to light.”
Chinese authorities have blamed the outbreak on a relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions.
Chinese authorities have blamed the outbreak on a relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions.
Both China and WHO have faced questions about the transparency of reporting on the earliest COVID-19 cases that emerged in the city of Wuhan in late 2019 and early 2020.
Since mid-October, the WHO said northern China had reported an increase in influenza-like illness compared to the same period in the previous three years. It said the country has systems in place to capture information on trends in illness incidence and to report that data to platforms such as the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System.
