There's something ominous going on in China that has many similarities to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There's an outbreak of a serious respiratory disease across several northern provinces of China. The reports are grim. "Footage showed crowds of masked parents and children at a hospital in Beijing. Sick children attached to intravenous drips filled the lobby of another hospital in Liaoning as they waited hours to see a doctor," writes Alina Chan at The Free Press. "So much about this story is hauntingly similar to the beginnings of the Covid pandemic four years ago."
Eyewitness footage shows an overcrowded waiting area at Beijing Children’s Hospital as China grapples with a surge in respiratory illnesses in its first full winter since easing COVID-19 restrictions. https://t.co/GfBCLFckUP pic.twitter.com/uD88FwWYlw
— ABC News (@ABC) November 27, 2023
Beijing schools have canceled classes. Doctors’ offices in the Chinese capital are reportedly overwhelmed. The signs point to a public health system being overwhelmed.
But don't worry, the Communist Chinese are telling us. These are just cases of pneumonia combined with other bugs already present in the country.
In other words, this is not another novel virus.
So we're told.
But the rest of the world is not so sure. China's record of sharing accurate public health information with the world leaves a lot to be desired. That's probably why the world is reacting to this outbreak the way it is.
Last week, Taiwan’s health ministry urged the elderly, children, and people with poor immunity not to travel to China unless necessary. In the U.S., a group of Republican senators has called for a travel ban to and from China until we know more about the epidemic. (Meanwhile, the WHO has advised against governments imposing travel restrictions and has not recommended any measures for people visiting affected cities. The Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. did not respond to questions about whether travelers from China are being screened for respiratory infections.)
For those of us watching from afar, with the memory of Covid still fresh, the initial scenes prompted an obvious—and terrifying—question: Could this be the start of another global pandemic?
Chinese parents are pushing back against their government's mania for secrecy. They're complaining about some draconian measures by the government to keep a lid on news about the bug.
One Beijing resident told Taiwanese journalists that parents could not report illnesses at schools and in class groups, stating that: “If you have symptoms such as fevers, cold, cough, and become hospitalized, you can privately ask the teacher for leave but cannot chat about these issues within the class groups, as these are considered state secrets. Everything is a state secret.”
Based on the limited information they have, many public health experts believe this recent outbreak is most likely not due to a new pathogen but a mix of winter bugs. But even if that is the case, this surge could still spell major health risks for the public. According to Annie Sparrow, a clinician and associate professor at the Icahn School of Medicine, the bacteria causing some of these pneumonia cases is most likely resistant to the class of antibiotics deemed safe for children under eight.
Global experts have no measure of the number of cases or mortality rates. Most importantly, although China says that the bug infecting kids and others is not new, we have no way to know what kind of testing the government has done to rule out a new virus.
This is not fear-mongering. Global health experts are very concerned. And given China's secretive society and its refusal to share bad news with its own citizens and the rest of the world, it would be a good idea for the U.S. and other Western nations to keep a close eye on the situation to prevent a repeat of what happened in 2020.
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