What is white lung syndrome, the mystery disease affecting children in China and US?

If the reports of a COVID-like outbreak of a form of pneumonia in China was not enough, America is also reporting several cases of a mystery disease. What makes this outbreak extremely alarming is that all of these cases have been reported in children. The average age of patients is 8 years and that makes it a threat to the entire children population. This disease in the USA, China and recently in Denmark and the Netherlands has been identified as white lung syndrome.

What is white lung syndrome?

It is important to not panic and not call it a repeat of the COVID pandemic that put the world under a lockdown for more than a year in 2020, because this is not a case of a novel respiratory disease. The Warren County Health Department said via a press release, "We do not think this is a novel/new respiratory disease but rather a large uptick in the number of pneumonia cases normally seen at one time."

The respiratory disease is named such due to how the lungs look in the medical scans. It is a disease that can cause discolouration of lungs. It is caused by mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a rare bacterial infection, with limited antibiotics to treat it. Sweden and Denmark are the latest countries to be hit by a multitude of cases of white lung syndrome.

Symptoms and prevention

The common symptoms of the disease are high and constant fever, cough, feeling short of breath, regularly occurring fatigue episodes and chest pain. The disease is known to spread through coughing, sneezing and even talking or breathing. This is because it is transmitted via minute respiratory droplets.

White lung syndrome is spreading very fast among children and to stop this outbreak, some precautions have been suggested. A few of them are washing your hands regularly and thoroughly, limiting your physical contact during gatherings for the holiday season and keeping your mouth and nose covered with a mask.