China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday reported hospitals are bracing for a surge of respiratory infections among the elderly, beginning in mid-December and peaking “around New Year’s Day in 2024.”
The Global Times tied the expected surge of elderly hospitalizations to the wave of illnesses currently sweeping through Chinese children. Reporters for the Chinese Communist newspaper ostensibly called hospitals across Beijing and found all of their “pediatric outpatient departments, departments of infectious diseases and respiratory departments are fully booked for the next seven days.”
“While infections are surging, medical experts expressed their confidence in dealing with the situation as there are adequate medical resources and timely response mechanisms have been optimized, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Global Times added, noting that Chinese officials have assured the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) they have the situation under control.
Tuesday’s article repeated the Chinese government’s assertions that the surge in respiratory illness among children is caused by known pathogens like influenza and not a novel new virus like the Wuhan coronavirus. In essence, Chinese officials say they are experiencing a remarkably bad season for influenza, rhinoviruses, respiratory diseases, and bacterial infections, all at the same time.
Li Tongzeng, chief physician for infectious diseases at Beijing You’an Hospital, told the Global Times he expected the wave of pediatric cases that began in October to hit their peak in “one or two weeks,” to be followed by herd immunity among children by the beginning of the year.
Li said holiday family visits would probably spread the diseases from children to elderly grandparents with weakened immune systems, producing the expected surge of geriatric cases in December.
Some clinic doctors told the Global Times they are already beginning to see elderly patients surging. The doctors recommended testing older patients with fevers for “mycoplasma pneumonia and influenza.”
Last week, the Global Times responded to growing outsider suspicion about the massive wave of pediatric infections by speculating that China has an “immunity gap” created by its brutal coronavirus lockdowns from 2020 to 2022.
This theory holds that when China was busy locking down entire cities to arrest the spread of Wuhan coronavirus, it inadvertently prevented people from contracting the mild illnesses that normally spread through casual contact, which weakened their immune systems. The lockdowns were discontinued after massive public protests at the end of 2022, so China’s first big flu season since the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic is now underway.
Nervous international observers have noted China responded to the Wuhan outbreak with similar rhetoric about seasonal viruses spreading a little more vigorously than expected. On Friday, Agence France-Presse (AFP) noticed a report about Chinese hospitals becoming “overwhelmed with sick children” on the same public disease message system that “once issued an early warning about mysterious pneumonia cases that turned out to be Covid.”
W.H.O. seemed unsatisfied with China’s breezy assurances that the flu season was lively but under control, requesting more information from Beijing last week about children stricken with “undiagnosed pneumonia.” W.H.O. rarely makes such public demands from national governments.
Chinese officials insisted in response to W.H.O. that no “novel pathogens” have been detected. Maria van Kerkhove, acting director of W.H.O.’s epidemic preparedness department, said a review of the data suggested this year’s wave of respiratory illnesses is large, but not as bad as the 2018-2019 flu season in China.
The New York Post (NYP) on Sunday reported on a “worrying” viral video that shows “a huge crowd of masked patients waiting to be treated inside a hospital in China.” The video of an overflow crowd of parents and children awaiting treatment raised fears the often-duplicitous Chinese government is not being completely honest about the severity of the respiratory disease outbreak.
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