The Daily Mail is reporting this morning that a mystery wave of pneumonia has hit Ohio and is reaching outbreak levels in the state.
Since August there have been 142 pediatric cases where children have tested positive for mycoplasma pneumoniae. China is also dealing with a surge in pneumonia cases that have affected thousands of children.
Here’s more via Daily Mail:
An ‘extremely high’ number of children are being hospitalized with pneumonia in Ohio — which is now the first US state to report an outbreak like the one in China.
Health officials in Warren County, 30 miles north of Cincinnati, said there have been 142 pediatric cases of the condition — dubbed ‘white lung syndrome — since August.
‘Not only is this above the county average, it also meets the Ohio Department of Health definition of an outbreak,’ the county’s health department said Wednesday.
The spread of cases has raised fears that an American outbreak of the infection that has overwhelmed hospitals China. Several European countries are battling similar crises.
An ‘ongoing investigation’ is underway in Ohio into what is triggering the wave of illness, but officials do not think it is a new respiratory disease, but instead a mixture of several common infections all hitting at once.
Patients so far have tested positive for mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterial lung infection for which some antibiotics are useless, strep, and adenovirus, a normally benign respiratory infections.
The average age of patients is eight, though some are as young as three.
In a release from the Warren County Health District, officials said: ‘We do not think this is a novel/new respiratory disease, but rather a large uptick in the number of pneumonia cases normally seen at one time.’
Doctors say patients are mostly suffering from a fever, cough and fatigue.
It is unclear if any deaths have resulted from the illness and officials have not responded to requests for more information.
The CDC says nothing is out of the ordinary at the nationwide level…
A source at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said their data showed childhood pneumonia levels in other states were following ‘seasonal trends’.
‘Nothing is flagging out of the ordinary, but we are continuing to monitor,’ they said.
But the Netherlands, Denmark and China have been dealing with a surge in these childhood same pneumonia cases…
It comes after the Netherlands and Denmark also said they were recording mysterious spikes in pneumonia cases, many of which are being attributed in part to mycoplasma.
Mycoplasma pneumoniae normally causes a mild flu-like illness, sometimes called ‘walking pneumonia’. Cases are most common in younger children.
Some antibiotics, such as penicillin, have no effect.
China has been recording a surge in childhood cases of pneumonia since May which only came to light last month after it was reported in Taiwan.
Health officials reported the cases to ProMED — the same system where Covid was first reported — saying there was a mystery pneumonia in the country.
Thousands of children are reported to have been taken to hospitals while sick in north and eastern areas of the country including Beijing, Shanghai and the province of Liaoning.
Chinese officials have insisted the wave of infections is not being caused by a new disease but instead is the country’s ‘exit wave’ from the pandemic.
Thankfully this hasn’t been reported as fatal. Given how bad the surge looks in China and what we saw with COVID, I seriously hope China hasn’t been screwing with pneumonia in one of their bio labs.