China's respiratory illness surge not as high as pre-pandemic, says WHO official

A World Health Organisation official has said that although there has been an increase in respiratory infections in China, it is not as high as it was prior to COVID-19 pandemic and that no new or unusual pathogens had been found in the recent cases. According to Maria Van Kerkhove, acting director of the WHO’s department of epidemic and pandemic preparation and prevention, the increase seems to be caused by an increase in the number of children catching diseases that they have avoided for the past two years due to COVID limitations. “We asked about comparisons prior to the pandemic. And the waves that they’re seeing now, the peak is not as high as what they saw in 2018-2019,” Reuters quoted Van Kerkhove as saying to health news outlet STAT in an interview on Friday. “This is not an indication of a novel pathogen. This is expected. This is what most countries dealt with a year or two ago,” she added. According to China’s National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng, the rise in acute respiratory infections has been related to the concurrent spread of multiple diseases, most notably influenza. The spike become a global issue last week when the World Health Organization asked China for more information, citing a report on clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children by the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases. China and the WHO have faced questions about the transparency of reporting early in the pandemic, which emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. The WHO said on Friday no new or unusual pathogens had been found in the recent illnesses. With inputs from agencies