HONG KONG — Hospitals in northern China appear to be “overwhelmed with sick children” as the country grapples with a surge in respiratory illnesses and clusters of pneumonia, prompting the World Health Organization to ask Beijing for more data.
At the Beijing Children’s Hospital in the capital, long lines of people were waiting to register during a visit by NBC News on Thursday. Waiting rooms were crowded with parents and children, some of them on IV drips.
In a review of China’s data, the World Health Organization said that the increase in cases came earlier in the season, “but not unexpected given the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, as similarly experienced in other countries.”
According to the WHO, Chinese health authorities did not detect new or unusual pathogens, and the rise in respiratory illnesses has not resulted in patient loads that exceed hospital capacities.
There was no indication that the outbreak in China poses any global threat, and the WHO advised against any travel restrictions “based on the current information available on this event.”
Since mid-October, the WHO said, northern China has reported an increase in respiratory diseases compared with the same period in the previous three years. The increase coincides with the end of China’s National Day holiday week, one of its busiest travel periods.
This is also China’s first full flu season since the lifting late last year of some of the world’s most stringent Covid-19 restrictions, which minimized many people’s exposure to a wide range of pathogens for three years.
Countries such as Australia and New Zealand that also had “zero-Covid” restrictions experienced similar surges in respiratory diseases when they were lifted, and the United States had its own “tripledemic” of respiratory viruses last year.
Something similar is most likely happening in China, said Jin Dong-yan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong.
“We don’t think there is a major issue there or there is some unknown disease or something that is hidden,” he told NBC News in a phone interview Thursday. “We have no evidence for that.”
The WHO said Wednesday that it had asked China to provide detailed information on an increase in respiratory illnesses and reported clusters of pneumonia in children.
That followed an alert on Tuesday by ProMED, a publicly available reporting system for emerging diseases and outbreaks, saying that hospitals in Beijing and elsewhere in China were “overwhelmed with sick children” amid outbreaks of pneumonia.
Both China and the WHO have been criticized over their transparency in reporting the initial cases of Covid-19, which was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Chinese health officials said last week that the country was experiencing a seasonal increase in overlapping respiratory diseases, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and the virus that causes Covid-19, attributing it in part to the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions.
They said there had also been a surge in cases of mycoplasma pneumonia, a common bacterial infection that usually affects young children and is also known as “walking pneumonia” because it rarely requires hospitalization.
Emma Wang, whose 7-year-old daughter had mycoplasma pneumonia, said the hospital they went to in Beijing was “very crowded.”
“It took us two or three hours to see the doctor, whereas normally the wait time is only half an hour,” said Wang, 39.
“I know four or five families with this situation,” she added. “I am very worried the virus will keep spreading.”
Mycoplasma pneumonia tends to spread in settings such as schools, dormitories and military barracks, with common symptoms including cough, sore throat, fever and headache. Most people have mild or no symptoms, while a “small subset” may develop severe pneumonia, Jin said.
“It’s not like Covid, it’s not like flu, and there are very effective antibiotics,” he said.
But China has reported limited data so far, Jin said, making it difficult to know the full extent of the outbreak of various respiratory illnesses.
“They need to tell the general public whether this is extremely high everywhere or just in one place,” he said.
Compared with pre-pandemic years, China’s current levels of respiratory disease may not be that unusual, Jin said, but more people may be going to hospitals “because they don’t know and because they are panicking.”
Social media users visiting hospitals in Beijing, where a cold snap is expected to send temperatures well below zero by Friday, have posted photos in recent days of long lines and high ticket numbers, with some saying they were told to come back the next day.
“Most people are rather sensitive to pneumonia and epidemic infections after Covid,” said Zhang Li, a doctor in the city of Dalian, in China’s northeastern Liaoning province, whose 14-year-old daughter recently recovered from mycoplasma pneumonia. “Parents might get anxious if their children don’t get better after one or two days.”
She said she had initially treated her daughter at home, but took her to the hospital when her symptoms persisted. “Other parents told me about their children’s pneumonia and their situations when we were chatting, so I became a little more cautious,” Zhang said.
Further pressure is created by the nature of the Chinese health care system, where it is common for people with mild illnesses to go straight to a hospital rather than a doctor’s office.
“Most people with mycoplasma infection should just stay home,” Jin said.
In an interview Thursday with Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, the National Health Commission similarly advised parents whose children have mild cases to avoid going to hospitals, citing long wait times and the risk of cross-infection.
The WHO advised people in China to reduce their risk of respiratory illness by getting recommended vaccinations, ensuring good ventilation, wearing masks as needed and washing their hands regularly, among other measures.
“Mycoplasma pneumonia is actually something we already know. It is not a new virus like Covid,” Jin said. “We have established protocols to deal with this and if we do it carefully, then it would be put under full control. It’s not a big deal.”
Jennifer Jett, Lena Li and Jiaxin Liu reported from Hong Kong, and Dawn Liu from Beijing.