A mystery pneumonia outbreak sweeping through China continues to get worse as desperate parents are clutching onto their children on hospital floors.
Kids are being hooked up to life-saving IVs as Beijing – where the unknown virus has badly hit – continues to downplay the dangers almost a week after issues started.
The dangerous illness is taking down children and emptying out schools across China as worrying echos of the Covid outbreak are being reported.
Doctors have been left overwhelmed with thousands of calls from worried parents trying to book emergency appointments.
Beijing has told the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the increase in cases of people with flu like symptoms is down to a new winter bug that has taken over due to Covid lowering immunity to common viruses.
Hospitals are reportedly “overwhelmed with sick children” who have symptoms such as inflammation in the lungs and a high fever but no cough.
A similar situation is developing in Liaoning – almost 500 miles from Beijing. Officials have reported an increase in “influenza-like illness” since mid-October when compared to the same period in the last three years, the WHO said.
Children are now showing ground glass opacity, also known as “white lung syndrome”, in lung scans – an indicator of severe respiratory illness. Many parents are deeply worried about “white lungs” and many sick children need “lung cleansing”, report Radio Free Asia.
But with hospitals warning of long waiting queues, parents are having to wait at least a day just for emergency care. ProMed – a system that monitors global disease outbreaks and was one of the first groups to identify the dangers of Covid – issued a warning on Tuesday.
A Beijing citizen ProMed, identified only as Mr W, said: “Many, many are hospitalised. They don’t cough and have no symptoms. “They just have a high temperature and many develop pulmonary nodules.”
At Beijing’s Capital Institute of Pediatrics’ Children’s Hospital, crowds of parents and children were seen dressed in winter clothes. A parent said her coughing nine-year-old son was sick with mycoplasma pneumonia – a pathogen that can cause sore throats, fatigue and fever.
“There are really a lot of children who have caught it recently,” she said. “Of course that worries me.” Li Meiling, 42, brought her eight-year-old daughter to the hospital, who she said was suffering from the same type of pneumonia.
