China responds to WHO finding no ‘abnormal or new pathogens’ after rise in respiratory illnesses

Neither China not even WHO It looks like they want to repeat the mistakes of the past. Both have emerged as key players in the health disaster and have come under intense international scrutiny.At the beginning of the pandemic, especially when coronavirus The person who caused all this didn’t even have a name. The secrecy of Asia’s great powers and the complacency of global health agencies are not a good combination. But the pandemic has left behind some lessons. One is that if any alerts are raised now, or there is any suspicion of a new virus that may be spreading across China’s vast territory, all communication channels will be activated quickly and transparently.

The World Health Organization issued a public statement on Wednesday asking countries to provide information, which makes sense. Beijing Reports of increases in respiratory illness and pneumonia in children.According to the agency’s explanation United Nations, These requests pull the mechanism international health regulationsThis is a common scenario with undiagnosed or unknown illnesses. And they happen often.

But sources consulted by this newspaper emphasized that public statements in this regard are uncommon, because we know that any news about a strange disease in China will always have a huge impact after the devastating epidemic has passed. Just like what happened this week.

Less than 24 hours after the WHO’s request, Chinese health authorities responded: They assured that they had not discovered “any unusual or new pathogens.” This is the conclusion of a report that includes epidemiological, clinical and laboratory analytical data.

On Thursday evening, via Xinhua News Agency, National Health Commission of China He admitted he was “paying close attention” to overcrowding in children’s hospitals, particularly in the north of the country. Chinese health authorities attribute the increase in respiratory illnesses to mycoplasma pneumonia (a common bacterial infection that often affects young children), influenza and SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes the new coronavirus.

Videos from Beijing continue to circulate on social networks, especially those from Beijing hospital emergency rooms. Institute of Pediatrics, crowded with parents holding children in their arms. Some people complained that they had been waiting for hours to be served. Similar scenes occurred in Liaoning Province, more than 600 kilometers to the north, where striking images of children receiving intravenous injections can be seen in the corridors of medical centers.

But the fact is that so-called infusion therapy is quite common in the Chinese medical system, and according to some controversies that have arisen in previous years, there is even abuse. Today, photos of kids doing homework while having IVs placed are going viral.Chinese media recalled that many hospitals in the country already had “Learning Area”There are tables and chairs next to the infusion room, as it is common for anyone with pneumonia to undergo this treatment.

The majority view among epidemiologists is that China, which is experiencing its first winter since lifting epidemic restrictions, has lower than normal natural immunity to respiratory viruses and has experienced large waves of infections starting with influenza. In children, prolonged incarceration results in a delayed age at which they are first exposed to common seasonal viruses.

“This is just a relatively large seasonal increase, partly due to some immunity debt due to poor winter growth over the past three years,” he said. Ben Cowlingepidemiologist Hong Kong university. “There is a plausible hypothesis that this may be what we see in other parts of the world as restrictions are lifted. I suspect this may eventually become more commonplace, or it may be a virus such as COVID-19, influenza or respiratory syncytial virus combination,” he insisted. Marion KoopmansA Dutch virologist who traveled with the World Health Organization team Wuhan Trying to decipher the origins of the coronavirus.

Another explanation put forward by experts is that a sudden large-scale new coronavirus infection occurred when China ended its lockdown policy at the beginning of this year, making people more susceptible to other respiratory infections.

On November 13, relevant Chinese authorities explained at a press conference that the sharp increase in the number of infections among minors was due to mycoplasma pneumonia, which mainly affects children, with the most common symptoms being headache, sore throat, cough and fever. In October, multiple Chinese state media outlets reported on an increase in such cases.

But it was not until the World Health Organization made its request public after releasing its report that international focus turned to China. Pumaide, the epidemic monitoring network that first alerted the world about the new coronavirus, said “undiagnosed pneumonia” was concentrated in the north of the Asian giant. Despite the media hype, the World Health Organization made it clear from the beginning that the cases cited by ProMed, whose first source was an article in a Thai newspaper talking about a mysterious pneumonia, could be related to an outbreak reported by Chinese authorities.

China, the World Health Organization and the Origins of the Pandemic

In late January 2020, when China shut down Wuhan due to the first known coronavirus outbreak and the virus was spreading around the world, the World Health Organization publicly praised Beijing’s rapid response to the novel coronavirus, thanking it for its transparency and transparency.It immediately shared the genetic map of the gene SARS-CoV-2.

Months later, an Associated Press (AP) investigation revealed that the Asian giant’s government was actually less willing to share key information during the critical early days of the pandemic.The Associated Press obtained WHO technical staff on Geneva. They complained privately that during the week of January 6, 2020, China did not share the data needed to assess the risk of the virus to the rest of the world. First, dissemination of the genome was delayed by more than a week after three Chinese labs had already deciphered it.

In Washington during the first months of the pandemic, then-President Donald Trump He has not stopped criticizing the World Health Organization, calling it a “puppet serving China’s interests.” There has never been any evidence that this was the case. But, as the AP recording noted, the group continued to praise China’s management even when it knew the Asian country’s authorities were not providing all the information in time to study the true impact.

The World Health Organization has also criticized Beijing for hiding death data as it removed all barriers to its extreme zero-COVID policy, but has insisted in recent years that it is working closely with Chinese authorities to reveal the origins of the coronavirus. Even the Geneva-based international organization sent a team of the world’s best virus hunters to Wuhan to try to solve a mystery that we still don’t have answers to.