“We are on guard,” the Thai Ministry of Health has advanced. “We are reviewing the measures against respiratory diseases “as an additional precaution,” the Indian reassured. Asia is preparing for the possible arrival of pneumonia and other ailments that China is suffering from. “On alert but not alarmed” It is the formula used these days that returns certain sensations of the unfortunate winter of 2019. China and the World Health Organization (WHO) insist that the avalanche of income does not respond to new pathogens but to old known ones, but Asia, unlike the West, errs on the side of excess and has not fared badly.
Taiwan today advised children, the elderly and the sick against traveling to China and, if they have no choice, to update their vaccines. The island has distrusted China since it swept under the rug the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pandemic that left 800 dead at the beginning of the millennium. Vietnam has asked the WHO and China’s National Center for Disease Prevention for more information on the outbreak and will propose that global measures if the virus spreads. The country is already suffering in its southern half saturation of some hospitals children due to a cocktail of seasonal viruses.
Echoes of covid
In India, the main state health authority has asked all states to evaluate their means to combat a sudden increase in respiratory diseases: staff, beds, medicines, flu vaccines, oxygen, insulating suits, detection kits… The country already registers a substantial increase in deaths due to flu, from seven last year to 53 this year. Thailand recommends wearing a mask and frequent hand washing and has increased surveillance in hospitals and tourist destinations.
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Northern China now has five weeks under an unusual wave of respiratory diseases and masks have returned to public transport. Some medical centers are close to saturation, photographs of hundreds of patients with tubes circulated on social networks in the waiting room of a hospital in Nanjing (eastern province of Jiangsu) and the director of a children’s center in Beijing regretted that the 7,000 patients a day exceeded in much its capacity.
ProMed, a global surveillance system for new diseases, spoke of “undiagnosed pneumonia”, the WHO asked China for additional information to what it had offered at a press conference and alarm bells went off. Such public requests are not common. But the response was quick and clear. The next day, and by videoconference, Beijing provided all the laboratory results and other required data showing that they are known bacteria and viruses, and not a new pathogen, the causes of the wave. Experts attribute it to the end of strict covid restrictions, now a year ago, and to the current circulation of several viruses. They assure that that policy of closures and quarantines, which lasted for three years, also limited the spread of common pathogens and created an immunity gap that now, without those dams and with the winter cold, makes people more vulnerable. Some of the pathogens that circulate, such as the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) or Mycoplasma penumoniae, attack minors more than adults, which explains the increase in diseases in the former.