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The mysterious pneumonia with atypical symptoms that overwhelmed hospitals in northern China and sparked strong fears that it could be the start of a new pandemic may have already reached Europe, British media reported. The grounds for such assumptions are given by the greatly increased cases of children’s respiratory diseases in recent days in the Netherlands.
The concerns of specialists are related to the fact that the new disease shows disturbing similarities with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the authorities in China were accused of a lack of transparency and a late warning to the rest of the world about the danger. At the moment, they claim that no new or unusual pathogen has appeared, but the usual winter microorganisms – mycoplasma pneumonia, respiratory syncytial virus or the flu. The large increase in cases was explained by the fact that this is the first winter after the abolition of sanitary measures in China and the immune system of people, especially children, has become more vulnerable due to the long isolation. And the Chinese lockdown was much stricter and longer than anywhere else in the world, writes scanner.news.
Many European countries and the US also saw a sharp spike in respiratory illnesses last year after sanitation measures were dropped. What is atypical in this case is that the children have a high fever and the X-ray shows a serious lung infection, but at the same time the characteristic cough is absent. There has been talk of “small lung syndrome” because of the way patients’ lungs look on x-rays.
Health expert Veronika Matutite told the British Sun that attention in Europe should be directed to major transport transit centers such as London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Doubts that the infection may already be in Europe come from the fact that the Netherlands has reported a large increase in respiratory illnesses with similar symptoms. In the penultimate week of November, children between the ages of 5 and 14 with pneumonia in the country were 103 per 100,000. Compared to the previous week, when there were 83 cases, the growth was 24%, data from the Netherlands Institute for Research in the field of health services. This is also significantly above the average values of flu illnesses last year, when 58 per 100,000 children fell ill per week.
It is too early to say whether the current spike in the Netherlands is related to the one in China. According to a number of specialists, it is possible that we are talking about a local seasonal epidemic that coincided with the cases in the large Asian country. The British Health Agency has said it is closely monitoring the situation, but there are fears that there could be a rise in respiratory infections on the Island over Christmas. Regardless, the appeal is: no understatement, but no panic button either.
The first alarm was sounded when footage leaked online of hundreds of children with their parents filling the corridors of a Beijing hospital waiting to be examined. The influx is so great that it took up to 1 day for an examination. The same situation was registered in Liaoning, 500 km from the capital. Doctors received thousands of calls a day, and many schools sent children home to stop the spread. The next moment, which seemed frightening, was the footage of sanitation workers wearing protective suits spraying disinfectants in classrooms, streets and public buildings. Hospitals in the northern part of the country currently receive between 7,000 and 13,000 children per day.
The World Health Organization has had to request more data from Beijing, including data from laboratory analyses. According to the chief epidemiologist, Dr. Maria Jean Kerkhove, the organization is in contact with the Chinese clinics and is monitoring whether the health system will withstand the pressure. The WHO tried to bring reassurance by announcing that an increase in respiratory diseases is being seen all over the world with the onset of the winter season. She also advocates, for now, the opinion that the culprit is the usual disease-causing winter microorganisms. However, the Western media do not fail to recall that at the beginning of the COVID-epidemic, the WHO was also criticized for inadequate and delayed actions.
Meanwhile, it has become clear that social distancing and wearing masks are returning in affected areas of China. A health ministry spokesman in Beijing told a press conference that efforts were being made to open new clinics, extend reception hours and boost the supply of medicine.
A day earlier, an anonymous source from China told the Epoch Times that a secret directive had been sent to the country’s health authorities to downplay what was happening. There was also a ban on mentioning COVID-19. The order was to talk only about mycoplasma infection or influenza. Western health experts are not in a hurry to jump to conclusions and spread panic because, according to them, information about what exactly it is about is too scarce.
At the same time, in many countries, the principle of “steamed mess blows” is used. It emerged yesterday that a committee in the US Congress has written a letter to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, demanding a more transparent approach to the mysterious pneumonia, so that the mistakes of the recent past are not repeated. The congressmen are demanding answers to 8 questions during a hearing scheduled for December 13. The main part of the questions are related to how the American health authorities communicate with the Chinese, what information they receive from them and what efforts are being made to prevent the spread to the United States.
Sp. “Newsweek” points out that although there is no tangible increase in cases at the moment, India, Taiwan and Vietnam have begun to implement preventive measures.
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2023-12-01 16:33:00
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