WHO asks China for data as mystery pneumonia cluster outbreak overwhelms hospitals

The World Health Organization has asked People’s Republic of China to provide more data, lab samples and information as mysterious and unexplained respiratory illnesses and pneumonia clusters was reported among children that has overwhelmed the medical facilities.

Using pre-pandemic language that resembled to the initial stages of the conferences held ahead of the January 2020 SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, China’s National Health Commission sounded alarm about the significant spike in the respiratory disease at a press conference last week. ProMed, a public surveillance system which monitors human and animal disease outbreaks globally sent a notification reporting the epidemic of “undiagnosed pneumonia” in Chinese children. 

Pneumonia and respiratory illnesses ‘of an unknown cause’: WHO

WHO, in a statement published earlier on Wednesday, said that reports of pneumonia and respiratory illnesses of an unknown cause have emerged in children in northern China. The circulation of an unknown respiratory pathogen like flu, COVID-19, and RSV is in the making, causing cluster outbreaks of sickness that has flu-like symptoms.

The global health agency has requested Beijing to hand over the data, including the patient lab results and how the disease is impacting the healthcare system. This is akin to December 30, 2019, when WHO was informed about the mounting cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) that had collapsed the hospitals with influx of patients who were severely ill with influenza like symptoms. The virus, that triggered global pandemic, was first detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China.

By January 1, 2020, WHO had scrambled to request additional information from Chinese national authorities to assess the risk and spread of reported cluster of pneumonia that required hospitalization among some patients who then reported severe acute respiratory infections.

Children's hospitals in China over the last weeks, similarly, were flooded with children affected by pneumonia of an unknown cause. Healthcare facilities in Beijing, Liaoning, and elsewhere were operating on full capacity with sick kids. Schools in China are on the "verge of suspension,” according to the International Society for Infectious Diseases. Parents are now increasingly concerned whether the Chinese authorities were covering up an epidemic.

"Many, many are hospitalized," a Chinese man told ISID. "They don't cough and have no symptoms. They just have a high temperature (fever) and many develop pulmonary nodules," he explained.

Patients need intravenous drips

In Liaoning Province, the situation is comparatively serious. The Dalian Children's Hospital was reportedly overwhelmed with the patients who are young children, many of whom needed intravenous drips. Long queues of sick patients are witnessed outside the traditional Chinese medicine hospitals and the central hospitals. Some patients have to wait in line for 2 hours. "We are all in the emergency department and there are no general outpatient clinics," a Chinese man told ISID. "Some school classes have even been canceled completely. Not only are all students sick, but teachers are also infected with pneumonia," he added.

While there is limited information provided by China so far, it may not necessarily point to the development of a new pathogen, Dr. Michael Osterholm—director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) told Fortune. “If it was a new pathogen, it would be showing up in kids and adults equally," he stressed. 

China's historical lack of transparency is a problem. An infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Dr. Amesh Adalja, said that it "would not be surprising if it’s a constellation of various respiratory pathogens together causing clusters of illness.” Some experts believe that the illness may be linked to mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacteria linked with severe lung infection causing “walking pneumonia.”

The “historical lack of transparency that is emblematic of China’s authoritarian government” is problematic, Adalja reportedly iterated.

Meanwhile, Dr. Stuart Ray, vice chair of medicine for data integrity and analytics at Johns Hopkins’ Department of Medicine told Fortune that the outbreak is "concerning." "It is not so out of the ordinary that we should presume this is due to a new pathogen," he said. “We can hope that authorities there will evaluate rapidly, take appropriate steps for mitigating spread, and be forthcoming about the nature and severity of the epidemic," he insisted.

As WHO seeks more data from China, it advised Chinese citizens to mask, vaccinate, and maintain social distance, wash hands, stay home when sick. It, at this point, remains unclear if "this is a collection of simultaneous peaks of a typical seasonal illness or a new infectious illness," Jay Weiland, a leading COVID modeler was reported saying.