- The US ambassador to Japan said “full cooperation” was a “public health imperative.”
- China has claimed the outbreak was due to seasonal respiratory illnesses
- READ MORE: China claims new virus is NOT the cause of pneumonia outbreak
Obama’s former White House chief of staff has broken diplomatic ranks and called on China to end the “deception” and show transparency over a new disease outbreak.
Chinese hospitals in a number of cities have been “overwhelmed” by a surge in childhood pneumonia that began in May but has not yet been reported to international authorities.
In an unusual move that renewed questions about transparency, the World Health Organization (WHO) made a public call for China to release health records earlier this week.
Chinese authorities said Thursday they had no evidence of “unusual or novel” pathogens and that the increase in respiratory illnesses was due to common infections rising again after the country’s brutal lockdowns.
Last night Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former White House chief of staff and former Chicago mayor who is now America’s ambassador to Japan, said there were still “serious questions” about the outbreak.
Rahm Emanuel, US Ambassador to Japan, said on
Chinese officials insist that no new pathogen is to blame, instead blaming a rise in common winter beetles as the country experiences a full winter without anti-Covid measures for the first time
In a tweet on X (formerly Twitter), he said: “The recent pneumonia outbreak in China raises serious questions, and the World Health Organization is asking them.”
“It is time to abandon the deceptions and delays caused by Covid, as transparent and timely information saves lives.” Full cooperation with the international community is not an option, but a public health necessity. Will Beijing strengthen itself?’
Doctors and health authorities in China believe Covid, RSV, influenza and Mycoplasma pneumoniae, a common bacterial disease also known as “walking pneumonia,” are responsible for the surge.
They claim these illnesses are causing worse outcomes because children’s immunity has been weakened during the country’s strict lockdowns – which is not unlike what happened in the US and UK last year.
However, doubts still remain about China’s transparency and many point to the eerie similarities between this outbreak and the early weeks of the Covid crisis.
China covered up the original SARS epidemic in 2003, and the delay in reporting Covid in late 2019 left countries’ responses flat-footed.
Local media reported earlier this week that hospitals in Beijing and 500 miles northeast in Liaoning were “overflowing with sick children” who had unusual symptoms, including inflammation of the lungs and high fever, but no cough.
The situation triggered an alert from ProMed – a disease surveillance system that also raised alarms about a mysterious infection in Wuhan in the final days of 2019 that would later turn out to be a global Covid pandemic.
After making an unusual “official request” for more information, the WHO said on Thursday it had spoken to officials at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Beijing Children’s Hospital.
The data submitted suggested that there had been an increase in cases of Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia since May and an increase in RSV, adenovirus and influenza cases since October.
The WHO said in a statement: “The Chinese authorities said that no unusual or novel pathogens or unusual clinical manifestations were detected.”
Local news reports said hospitals in Beijing and nearly 500 miles northeast in Liaoning were “overflowing with sick children.”
She added: “Some of these increases are occurring earlier in the season than in the past, but are not unexpected given the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, similarly experienced in other countries,” the WHO said in a statement.
“No changes in the clinical picture have been reported by the Chinese health authorities.”
The statement said: “They further stated that the increase in respiratory illnesses has not resulted in the number of patients exceeding hospital capacity.”