Massachusetts has become the second U.S. state to be hit with a pneumonia outbreak in children as the viral infection sweeps through China.
Local physicians are saying the uptick in pneumonia is mostly caused by RSV, a respiratory virus that can have deadly impacts, especially on children and the elderly.
“This is the season for RSV and we’re seeing a whole lot of it … a lot of kids with upper viral respiratory infections, cough, runny nose, some fevers,” Dr. John Kelley of Redwood Pediatrics told Western Mass News.
The sickness is “circulating in our area” and is “impacting children in particular,” the local outlet reported.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that RSV causes 58,000-80,000 hospitalizations and 100-300 deaths among children younger than five years old each year.
Kelley said that while most young patients improve within a few days, there are major concerns about how to stop the virus.
“There are no medications to give to cure. Once you have it, [it] is all supportive care,” he explained.
Warren County, Ohio, has already met the threshold to officially designate the spread as an “outbreak,” health officials announced Wednesday.
“The Warren County Health District has received an extremely high number of pediatric pneumonia cases being reported this fall season. Since August, there have been 142 cases of pediatric pneumonia reported,” the district said in a news release.
“Not only is this above the county average, it also meets the Ohio Department of Health definition of an outbreak.”
The illness has spread through multiple school districts, with the average age of those infected being eight years old, the announcement said.
Officials added that they do not believe this is a “novel/new respiratory disease” but rather a “large uptick in the number of pneumonia cases normally seen at one time.”
Meanwhile, China’s state-run Global Times admitted Wednesday that hospitals are struggling to cope with the “surge in cases of respiratory illnesses in children” but claimed “the health system has not been overwhelmed as it did during the early stage of the fight against [Wuhan coronavirus].”
Parents with children suffering from respiratory diseases are lining up at a children’s hospital in Chongqing, China, on November 23, 2023. (Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Images and videos of Chinese health officials donning hazmat suits began circulating on social media, reminding many of the beginning stages of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan.
After the story got picked up by Western media, a Chinese Communist Party-controlled publication complained Thursday about the coverage of the country’s outbreak, accusing foreigners of overhyping the situation to fuel a “smear campaign.”
The Global Times wrote:
Over the past days, Western media outlets have been filled with rhetoric such as “unexplained pneumonia,” “mysterious,” and “concerning” when reporting on respiratory illnesses in China. It’s reminiscent of the beginning of the [Wuhan coronavirus] pandemic, following the same formula of associating China with mysterious pneumonia.
Despite growing concerns of a more widespread outbreak, U.S. officials have said they do not believe in a link between the pneumonia cases across the U.S. and the ones in China.
CDC Director Mandy Cohen told Congress on Thursday there is “no new or novel pathogen” behind the wave spreading across China, so there is no reason for Americans to be concerned about another pandemic from China.
Parents with children suffering from respiratory diseases are lining up at a children’s hospital in Chongqing, China, on November 23, 2023. (Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“These [cases] are related to existing pathogens – COVID, flu, RSV and mycoplasma, a bacterium that can infect the lungs,” Cohen told the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, adding that the conclusion was supported by “other sources from our European Union partners and others to make sure that we are getting a complete picture.”
Even more countries, however, have also begun experiencing upticks in pediatric pneumonia, with the Netherlands seeing an “alarming” surge, the New York Post reports.
According to the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research, 80 of every 100,000 children between ages five and 15 were treated for pneumonia recently.
This figure is up from only 60 cases per 100,000 during the height of flu season in 2022.
Cases in children under four are also on the rise, increasing from 124 to 145 per 100,000.
“This is the biggest pneumonia outbreak the Utrecht-based research institute has recorded in recent years,” the Post reported.