- The country has seen a wave of cases among children in recent weeks, something the authorities have blamed on multiple pathogens
- Parents and teachers express concern that some children are still coming to school when sick, helping to spread the disease further
- China’s education ministry has urged schools to step up daily health checks and reporting as the country grapples with a wave of respiratory illness among children.
- In a directive issued on Monday, it also said schools should conduct risk assessments with local health departments to help fight the problem.
- China has seen a spike in acute respiratory diseases among children since October. Paediatric departments across the country are reportedly being packed with young patients and forced to expand services to tackle the problem.
- Health authorities have said that multiple pathogens, such as the influenza virus and mycoplasma pneumoniae, were responsible for the case spike, but stressed that “no new infectious diseases caused by new viruses or bacteria have been found”.
- Zhang Ligang, 53, a teacher at a primary school in Wuhan in central China, said students at her school began calling in sick in mid-November, with more than 30 students absent from a school population of over 400 at the peak. She said that so far one class at the school has been closed.
- “I feel the wave this year is less severe than last winter’s outbreak,” she said, referring to the surge of Covid-19 cases after Beijing abruptly relaxed zero-Covid restrictions.
- Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, gained global attention as the place where Covid was first detected in late 2019.
- Zhang added the school would suspend classes and report to local disease control departments if more than a third of pupils in one class got sick.
- In the directive, the education ministry also told schools to make preparations for online classes for sick children and guide them in home learning.
- It also said schools should “guide families in disease control” and “collaborate with relevant departments to promote vaccination”.
- Wang Dayan, director of the Chinese National Influenza Centre, said last Saturday that existing vaccines for prevalent respiratory diseases, including flu, have proved to be “safe and effective”.
- “It is still effective for people who have not previously been vaccinated against influenza to get the flu vaccine now,” she said.
- Liu Taobei, a 35-year-old designer in Wuhan, said he was “really worried” when his three-year-old daughter needed hospital treatment after coming down with a mycoplasma infection.
- “The CAT scan revealed that half of her lung was white. It’s the first time since she was born that she’s been sick so badly,” he said.
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