BEIJING: China has reported no ‘unusual or novel pathogens’ in a respiratory illnesses spreading in the north of the country, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
Northern China has recorded an increase in “influenza-like illness” since mid-October when compared to the same period in the previous three years, said the WHO, which had requested more information on the situation.
China’s National Health Commission told reporters last week that the respiratory illness spike was due to the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions and the circulation of known pathogens, namely influenza and common bacterial infections that affect children, including mycoplasma pneumonia.
The WHO said Thursday that Chinese authorities had responded, advising “that there has been no detection of any unusual or novel pathogens or unusual clinical presentations, including in Beijing and Liaoning.”
It was a matter, the authorities said, of the “aforementioned general increase in respiratory illnesses due to multiple known pathogens.”
The Chinese capital of Beijing, located in the north of the country, is currently experiencing a cold snap, with temperatures expected to plummet to well below zero by Friday, state media said.
The city has “entered a high incidence season of respiratory infectious diseases,” Wang Quanyi, deputy director and chief epidemiological expert at the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state media.
Beijing “is currently showing a trend of multiple pathogens coexisting,” he added.
At the children’s hospital of Beijing’s Capital Institute of Pediatrics on Thursday, AFP journalists saw crowds of parents and children dressed in winter clothes.
A parent surnamed Zhang accompanied her coughing nine-year-old son and said he had fallen ill with mycoplasma pneumonia — a pathogen that can cause a sore throat, fatigue and fever.
“There are really a lot of children who have caught it recently,” she said. “Of course, that worries me!“
Li Meiling, 42, had brought her eight-year-old daughter, who she said was suffering from the same type of pneumonia.
“It’s true that a lot of children her age are ill with this at the moment,” she told AFP.
But she also thought it was “normal that there are more cases of respiratory illnesses. It’s due to the season.”
The WHO has urged people to take preventative measures, including getting vaccinated, keeping distance from sick people and wearing masks.
Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, the WHO repeatedly criticized Chinese authorities for their lack of transparency and cooperation.
More than three years after cases were first detected in Wuhan, heated debate still rages around the origins of Covid-19.
Scientists are divided between two main theories of the cause: an escape from a laboratory in the city where such viruses were being studied and an intermediate animal that infected people at a local market.
Earlier this year, WHO experts said they were sure that Beijing had far more data that could shed light on the origins of Covid, and called it a moral imperative for the information to be shared.
A team of specialists led by the WHO and accompanied by Chinese colleagues investigated China in early 2021, but there has not been a team able to return since and WHO officials have repeatedly asked for additional data.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has stressed that getting to the bottom of the mystery could help avert future pandemics.
China reports no ‘unusual or novel pathogens’ in respiratory illnesses upsurge
https://arab.news/82fv4
China reports no ‘unusual or novel pathogens’ in respiratory illnesses upsurge
- Northern China has recorded an increase in “influenza-like illness” since mid-October
- The WHO said Thursday that Chinese authorities had responded, advising “that there has been no detection of any unusual or novel pathogens”
US lawmaker Fine criticized by rights advocates, Democrats after anti-Muslim remarks
- Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others
WASHINGTON: Rights advocates and multiple Democrats on Tuesday condemned anti-Muslim comments by Republican US Representative Randy Fine who said on Sunday that “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Fine, whose comments against Muslims have often sparked outrage, has dismissed the criticism and since doubled down on his remarks on social media. The Council on American-Islamic Relations designated the Republican US lawmaker from Florida as an anti-Muslim extremist last year.
“If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” Fine said on X on Sunday in a post that had over 40 million views as of Tuesday afternoon.
Some high-profile Democrats including California Governor Gavin Newsom called for him to resign while House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Fine an “Islamophobic, disgusting and unrepentant bigot.”
Jeffries also called for Republicans — who hold a majority in both chambers of Congress — to hold Fine accountable.
“To ignore this is to accept and normalize it,” Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others. Rights advocates have noted a rise in Islamophobia in the US in recent years due to a range of factors including hard-line immigration policies and white-supremacist rhetoric, as well as the fallout of Israel’s war in Gaza on American society.
