Nations put eyes on China amid outbreaks of child pneumonia

A southwest Ohio county says an “extremely high” number of children are getting pneumonia, with 142 recent cases triggering the state definition of an outbreak.

Authorities in Denmark say they have seen a similar trend, with a five-week surge in the bacterium that causes “walking pneumonia” mirroring a spike in the Netherlands. China is once again the epicenter of a respiratory crisis, with pediatric pneumonia flooding hospitals in the capital of Beijing and northern China.

The global surge in lung-related problems is sounding alarms on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers told the nation’s top disease fighter on Thursday to look into the issue and keep Beijing honest after the communist government obfuscated the source of the last global health nightmare.

“The lack of reliable information coming out of China is a troubling parallel to 2020,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington Republican, told Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen.

Dr. Cohen and other global authorities aren’t panicking.

They say the cases appear to be caused by known bugs, including the flu, adenovirus and a bacterium called Mycoplasma pneumoniae — and not a new pathogen like the coronavirus that struck Wuhan in late 2019.

Unlike the coronavirus, which caused millions of deaths, patients typically recover from the conditions. Mycoplasma infection is treatable by antibiotics, although some forms of the bacterium are resistant.

Dr. Cohen, testifying before a congressional panel Thursday, said the CDC has an office in China trying to get to the bottom of the situation.

“We do not believe this is a new or novel pathogen. We believe this is all existing [pathogens] — meaning COVID, flu, RSV, Mycoplasma. But they are seeing an upsurgence,” Dr. Cohen told the House panel’s subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

Dr. Cohen said the CDC isn’t simply accepting Beijing’s word.

“We were able to corroborate that information across other sources, from our European Union partners and others to make sure we were getting a complete picture,” Dr. Cohen said.

The medical consensus is that Mycoplasma pneumoniae is surging as part of a multiyear cycle in the Northern Hemisphere.

The number of children affected suggests a lack of exposure and resulting immunity to certain diseases, particularly after full and partial societal closures during the COVID-19 emergency. China locked down longer and deeper than other places.

“It appears to be a combination of still recovering from lockdown during COVID and, maybe in particular with M. pneumoniae, it does have four- to seven-year cycles among young children,” said William Schaffner, an infectious diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University. “The other thing is, with all the news about this China cluster, there may be a surveillance artifact. In other words, people are looking at their own data and saying, ‘Look, there’s an increase of the pneumonia here.’ The more you look, the more you’ll find.”

In Denmark, the Statens Serum Institut recorded 541 cases of Mycoplasma pneumoniae in a recent week, compared with 168 cases in one week in mid-October.

“In the past five weeks, the number of new cases has increased significantly, and we are now seeing significantly more cases than usual, and that there is widespread infection throughout the country,” said senior researcher Hanne-Dorthe Emborg, according to a translated statement posted online by the Avian Flu Diary. “Mycoplasma infections come in waves, where the disease affects the groups in the population that have not yet built up immunity.”

Health officials in Warren County, Ohio, said they have not found a common thread or source linking the pneumonia cases, which are affecting patients averaging 8 years old and impacting multiple school districts.

“We do not think this is a novel/new respiratory disease but rather a large uptick in the number of pneumonia cases normally seen at one time,” the county health district said Wednesday.

Officials said doctors should consider swabbing for respiratory viruses, Mycoplasma and pertussis for patients with common symptoms such as cough, fever or fatigue.

The problem in China, meanwhile, has garnered the greatest scrutiny.

Chinese officials downplayed the emergence of the coronavirus in Wuhan, which is home to a major coronavirus lab, in late 2019, delaying and complicating the global response before the virus spread to South Korea, Italy and other countries. It killed more than 1 million people in the U.S. alone.

The World Health Organization pressed Beijing for information about the sudden surge in respiratory illnesses in northern China and the capital.

Like Dr. Cohen, the health arm of the United Nations said it believes the causes are Mycoplasma pneumoniae and common seasonal culprits such as the flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

“Some of these increases are earlier in the season than historically experienced, but not unexpected given the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, as similarly experienced in other countries, the WHO said in a statement last week.

Still, U.S. lawmakers want the CDC to make sure China’s communist government is telling the truth, as scars from the COVID-19 experience run deep.

The senior Republican on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions said he wants a briefing from the CDC.

“The biggest barriers to the early international response to COVID-19 were the Chinese government repressing information on the outbreak and preventing international experts’ access. Known respiratory diseases may be the cause of this new outbreak, but when it comes to China, we need to verify, then trust,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. “The Biden administration should scrutinize whatever the [Chinese Communist Party] allows to be released to make sure it’s adequate for the rest of the world to make decisions for their own public health.”