Mysterious contagion in China

WHO on the alarm from China: "Could be anything"  

The World Health Organization WHO has requested more information from China about the unknown type of pneumonia that is spreading among school children in several parts of the country. The World Health Organization wants to receive epidemiological and clinical information and also share laboratory results.  

The World Health Organization also wants additional information on current trends in the spread of sars-cov 2, rsv and mycoplasma.  

On the social platform X, the doctor Krutika Kuppalli, who works with the WHO's emergency program, writes that the epidemic could be "anything". She compares to the first reports of covid-19, at the end of 2019, and states that she is as concerned now as she was then. 

“But jumping to conclusions will not help us. We do not know what they have been tested for," she writes.  

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Mysterious pneumonia spreads among children in China  

Hospitals in several locations in northern China are reported to be "overrun" with cases of a previously undiagnosed type of pneumonia.  

The Telegraph reports that Promed, a surveillance system that monitors disease outbreaks worldwide, has alerted that hospitals in both Beijing and Liaoning, 80 miles north of the capital, have been affected by the disease.  

The sick children must suffer from a high fever, but not cough or have other symptoms of pneumonia. Many are said to have also developed lung nodules. 

"It is unknown when the outbreak started. It is unusual for so many children to be affected so quickly. The fact that no adults were affected indicates that infection may have occurred at school," writes Promed. 

The fact that this is the first winter in China after the strict covid restrictions ended may also be an important factor, according to the global monitoring system. 

 Al-Jazeera reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) has contacted Beijing with an official request for more information on the outbreak.